English Conversation Class

Hey its been a while since I have posted so let me go on and say sorry. To be perfectly honest I have been in a bit of a doldrums. I'm getting close to my big summer break and now it feels like a count down. Outside of school we have started an adult English Conversation Class. Its been a lot of fun. Most of our students are of a fairly high level so we can really talk to them. Its been nice running in to people from the class around town that makes this seems homey. There are about 10 regular student, with only one man. The one man is a character to. He speaks English like he newk it really well 40 years ago and now he remembers words and phrases but not grammar. During our first class we asked him how old he was and he said, "many many years ago 20, 20 many many years ago." The whole thing interspersed with Japanese. He also loves to talk to the young women in class. He was talking to one of the ladies and he goes, "you babies, how many babies?" My favorite is when we did the lesson on directions. We were teaching words like, straight, past, turn, traffic light and types fo buildings. There was a map drawn on the board and the students would ask direction from one point to another on the map. He goes to Stephanie and goes, "I'm crazy, I'm drunk. From police station how get to my house." Stephanie starts to answer and he says is a joke. Then he starts again and goes, "ok ok I'm drunk at police station how do I get home." Needless to say with great stories like this he is our favorite student. He frequently hijacks class to tell stories about the US military (which he has friends in) or an orphanage he volunteers at in an endearingly rambley mix of English and Japanese. Also, the class has several student who are from China. Its really made me wonder how many Chinese women live in Ichinohe. They speak excellent Japanese, so to be honest I wouldn't have thought they were Chinese unless they told me. My Japanese will never be that good.

In other news its not long now till Stephanie goes back to America and a new teacher comes. That is one of the down sides of teaching abroad is few people stay more then 2 or 3 years at most. This means that you can have almost all your friends leave at once. Also, with Japanese school system they move teacher around every few years so half way through your contract you can lose a favorite teacher then months later lose your foreign friends to them going home. This means that two years in the same town at the same schools can give you two very different years. Now we have been very luck I did lose a great teacher but he was replaced with someone equally good and that has been nice. Also, with the church and our friends there we have help and support outside of school that wont change. This August I will start my second year teaching so my next post will probably be a sumation of my whole thoughts on a year of teaching ESL here.

Shoji

So maybe the wasp was too scary.

How about some Japanese home maintenance to calm everybody down?

When a westerner thinks of Japan they probably think of sushi, sumo, ninja, cherry blossoms and shoji. ( And those darned used panty vending machines. Yes, I've heard they exist. I've never crossed paths with one. Why is this considered the pinnacle of Japanese weirdness?)

Shoji, in case you don't recognize the name, are those sliding doors that divide off rooms in traditional Japanese houses. They are made out of some kind of lightweight wood and rice paper. They have a minimalist, clean look to them that westerners seem to instinctively love.

" I love the shoji! They're so pretty", I said to my tutor, brimming with naive enthusiasm.

" You love them because you are a westerner. I hate them.", said my tutor with a knowing grimace.

I now know why she hates them. The papers on the shoji has to be changed every so often.
I'm not sure how often they are supposed to be changed, but our shoji papers had little spots of mold on them in places so we decided it was time. I thought it would be a fun little project, and it was fun... for the first door.

I took some pictures to give you an idea of the process.
We start out here. It may be a little hard to see, but the paper is torn, mildewed and turning brown at the edges.



Step one: splash some water on it. I took the this picture because of how dramatic the splashing was, in reality though the goal is to completely saturate all of the paper.
Okay. Now that the whole thing is wet, you let it sit for a few minutes. This gives the water time to break down the rice glue that is holding the paper on the door. Next comes the fun part ( at least for me): stripping off the paper.



I get the strangest urge to play burlesque music in the background.


Now! The frame is all nice and bare and ready to be set out to dry.






Here's the pile of old papers that I pulled off. Oh and my feet sticking out into the picture.








And here are several frames sitting out to dry. I let them dry overnight to make sure I wouldn't have trouble with mold.






The next day I started here. I put the empty frame on the floor and applied rice glue to each and every little slat. Then I put the paper on... crooked. So I pulled it up, reapplied glue and tried again... this time I put it on upside down. So I pulled it up again, reapplied glue again and finally managed to get it on right.




Next, I take my trusty razor and trim away all the excess.

Much better, but now I had to do something scary. Caleb had talked to his teachers, and they all agreed that after you glue the paper down, you have to spray each panel with water to tighten the whole thing up. So I spray the thing down.
I am immediately certain that I have ruined all my painstaking effort. Little wrinkles appear in the paper and I hate every one of them.

After the paper dried though, I was treated to a happy surprise. What do you know, Caleb's teachers knew what they were talking about. The wrinkles were gone and the paper now made a very satisfactory, drum-like thump when tapped.


I'll leave you with this last image (even though Caleb completed the doors in this specific picture). Don't they just look lovely? I still like how shoji look, but I will never look forward to re-papering them again.

The new dominant species

Japan is safe for the most part.

Both Violent and petty crimes are lower than in the United States. If you were to drop a 10,000 Yen note, the person that found it would run you down to return it.

I felt safe in Japan... until I discovered the Asian Giant Hornet.

I had noticed that all Japanese children were mortally afraid of all flying stinging insects. I thought this was just kids being cute. How wrong I was.

I have seen a giant hornet in person on two occasions. The first occasion Caleb and I were eating our lunch outside, enjoying the day, when one of these suckers just buzzed up. We ran for the house and watched as that evil thing walked all over our noodles. After it finally lost interest we dashed back out for the dishes. Don't judge, you would have let him have your noodles too.

(Click to see the full size. I wanted nice, big images)

Might I introduce vespa mandarinia ? Look at that thing! Just look at it. The worlds largest hornet, it delivers one of the most painful stings in the insect kingdom. The venom contains a neurotoxin and can dissolve human flesh (much like a spider bite). These things are so toxic that they cause more human deaths in Japan than all other venomous and non venomous wild animals combined.
Its stinger is 1/4 of an inch long. Its wingspan is 3 inches!
Okay, I can tell that you're not picturing the size of this thing accurately. Here:
I have no idea how they got that hand model to stand still with that abomination on their hand.
These hornets feed on other insects. Two or three of them is all it takes to bring down a honeybee hive of thousands. The honeybee stingers can't pierce the hornets exoskeleton, so the hornet just patiently tears each individual bee in half with its mandibles.
The bees have only one defense against the hornets.
The Bee ball.
(Notice how cute and lovable normal bees look after seeing the giant hell-hornet)

The bees can form a ball around the hornet and vibrate their flight muscles. This overheats the hornet and kills it. The bees can live through higher temperatures and are able to survive the bee ball.

I was discussing this hornet with my mother and brother a few weeks ago. One of us, and I don't even remember which one it was, suggested that these hornets be brought to America to stave off the killer bee population. It didn't even take a full second before we all realized what a very, very bad idea that was.

Oh and remember that bee ball I told you about? Only Japanese bees can do it. European bees can't figure it out. So imagine to yourself, for just a moment, that there were packs of these awful things buzzing around killing all the bees in America.

Oh and here are my sources if you want to know more about the insect that is going to wipe out all other sentient life ( or if you don't believe me):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_giant_hornet

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/10/1025_021025_GiantHornets.html

http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/japanese/hornet.html


Here's a video of a guy talking about the hornet's anatomy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7sJ5TZsJ-Q

Great Weekend

The last Friday I got to experience something very Japanese. I got to plant rice with my elementary school kids. Everyone except the first and second grade went to plant a field. The field belonged to a student's grandmother and the school plants it every year. It took about an hour for us to do it all and was pretty fun. The rows planted by real farmers were straight and even the rows planted by kids were ,lets just say, not straight and even. There were about 6 or 7 inches of water over about the same of mud. The rice goes in several plants at a time about half under the water and half above. The kids had a great time playing in the mud and splashing each other with it and I was glad to try planting the rice. However, it seems like it would be a hard job.

Saturday, the church had a festival to shear the sheep. It was mostly kids, church members, and the people from the handicap school in Okunakayama who went. I had never seen a sheep being sheared and was surprised by how docile they were through the whole process. After the shearing we had an egg hunt and ate lunch with some friends from the church. It was all-in-all a ton of fun and something that we couldn't have without living in a rural area and our close friends at the church.

Also, I went with the pastor to hear another pastor speak. The speaker was the pastor of a Japanese language church that meets in a New York Methodist church. His speech was in Japanese and I could only get about 75% of it. Even with that though it was very interesting. Though his comments about crime in America were a bit embarrassing. Since, it was in Sannohe there wasn't anyone who already knew me except my Pastor, but people were really friendly.

Sunday. Stephanie and I went to the Fuji Matsuri in Kozuya. Now this was not Fuji like the mountain but Fuji like the flower. The flowers had not bloomed because of a cold snap but the festival was fun. It was at the Elementary school and all the kids were there. The older towns people sang folk songs and the kids did dances. It was a great afternoon. One of my second graders gave Stephanie and I cotton candy and was so cute. Also the kids were selling soda and toys.

Three days of great activities show that winter Ichinohe and Summer Ichinohe are completely different. Winter is dead with nothing going on at all. Summer is alive with events every weekend all the time.

Sports Day!

Okay! I think that I have managed to scrape together some pictures of sports day that do not violate student privacy.

I should probably talk a little bit about what sports day is.
Sports day is an event that Japanese schools have in late spring or early summer. The entire student body is divided into two teams ( the red team and the white team). There are a variety of competitions held throughout the day. At the end, one team is awarded first place and the other is awarded second place.
I'm unable to provide pictures of all of the events. In fact most of the more interesting events show too much of a single kid's face.

There was one event in particular that I wish we had a picture of. It was listed on the days schedule as the pan, pan, pan race. The pan, pan, pan was a delightfully wacky race with three parts. First, the child had to blow up a balloon and sit on it hard enough to burst it. This sounds exceedingly simple until one remembers that the child in question is a Japanese elementary school student.( Let me tell you, a swift breeze could blow some of the smaller ones clean away. )

So after each kid had bounced unsuccessfully on their balloon three or four times, they finally manage to pop it. Next, they have to run while holding a ball in a cooking pan without letting the ball roll out. The third and final challenge was easily the most entertaining. There were individually wrapped bread snacks hanging suspended from string. The children had to grab the bread without using their hands.
They. were. adorable.
They looked like little goldfish trying to catch the bread in their mouths. Some kids had the perfect strategy, while others were tragically inept, but all of them were adorable.
After I had seen the race in action I finally figured out the name pan, pan, pan
Pan!- The sound effect of the balloon popping
Pan- the cooking pan
Pan- for whatever reason the Japanese word for bread is Pan. I don't know of any other Spanish loan words.

I felt really smart for figuring this out. I'm pretty sure that's a little sad.


Anyway, on to the Pictures!



Note: there are two different sportsdays being represented here. One middle school and one elementary school. If the kids are about knee-high It's the elementary school.



Here we have an event at Chokai. The kids had to make a London Bridge style tunnel of steepled hands. The last link in the chain was allowed to run through and become the first link. The constant movement reminded me of a caterpillar.
These were the coats that the kids wore for a special dance.


After lunch, the kids got themselves ready for the cheering competition. This invovled most of the boys painting themselves from head to toe.

Regrettably, most of the cheer competition didn't make the great photo cut because of kid's faces being visible. This is part of the Red team's performance. The white team did a really funny lip sync of a popular boy band. Caleb and I, getting ready to perform in the traditional dance. Caleb had seen it performed once. I had never even a single step of it. Oh well, I'm sure we just blended in with the other dancers....
Oh yeah, I never blend in anywhere... crud.

This was an event for the PTA. They had to carry these little horse carts. The horses had bells on them.
This was a strange event that I'm still not entirely sure I understand. Both teams stood at opposite sides of the field. There were bamboo poles, tires and a huge rope in the middle.
When the shot fired, both teams raced for items in the middle and dragged them back to their own side. While it was immensely entertaining to watch 10 elementary school students dragging a tire in 10 different directions, the end scoring made very little sense.

I'm afraid that's all for now.

Tune in next week when one of us will blog about the sheep shearing at Okunakayama.
Here's a teaser: