I may dominate 1st graders at Dodgeball...

...but 3rd graders proved significantly more challenging (I blame the uncatchibility of the ball).

HOWEVER, in soccer my two years of experience hosing slightly older, smarter students at CTY left me very well equipped to handle even 5th and 6th graders.

Last week I played with a big group of boys. Scored one goal, but he highlight came when a ball rolled out of bounds for a goalie kick (they let the goalie punt on a goalie kick, and by "goalie" I mean "anybody").

"Matt-sensei, douzo!"
WHAAAAAM! (ball flies past ALL the kids, easily 2-3x as far as any of their previous kicks)
all: "ooooohhhh! Matt-sensei, Soccer wa tsuyoi (strong)!"

"Cute Eyelashes" Count:

3

I'm Huge in Japan.

Had this exchange today with one of the 7th grade girls at lunch (I eat with the students, and rotate classes):

her: (gestures at eyes)
me: "uh...eyelashes?"
her: "eyelashes, long."
me: "oh, yes..."
her: (turns to friend next to her) "very cute!"
me: (insert quote from Super Troopers about making a dark man blush) "oh...thanks!"
I think she was surprised I heard her. Her friend was all "say you're welcome!" while she was all "no, no!"

It's good to see my students trying to communicate with me. Ah, to be a middle school student...

Thanksgiving in Japan

We had our mid-year seminar (yes, it's only been 3 months) on Thursday and Friday.

Thursday a bunch of us went out for dinner. Thanksgiving, if you didn't know, is a purely North American (America/Canada) tradition, so we substituted KFC for roast turkey.

I was thankful for "the falling dollar, and the fact that I'm paid in yen."

Summitting the Big Mountain

On September 27th (yeah, this post is a bit late) I hiked up Daisen. 大"Dai" in Japanese, meaning "Big," and 山"Sen," meaning "Mountain." Last month I hiked up Big Mountain.

Daisen is over 1,700m tall. This sign came about halfway up.

I spent most of the hike in the company of this group--there were many adults, but they can't hang with the youth.

Two JETs, three exchange students. (The one on the right was the ostensible reason for the climb--homestay families and people associated with her high school hiked up the mountain to "welcome" her. Some welcome, eh?)

The weather was absolutely gorgeous. Clear skies, warm (but not hot) day...my co-teacher (who invited me and Josh, the other JET) said that there are maybe a dozen days this good in a given year.

The mountain trail faces the Sea of Japan, so for much of the way up there's a clear view of the water through the breaks in the trees (not to mention the several lookouts).

Trees thinning--approaching the summit...

...and here it is. There's even a summit shack, complete with a vendor (does he stock by helicopter, or does somebody haul cases up a 1,200m hike?).

The requisite picture with the elevation sign.

The way down had some beautiful sunlight-through-the-clouds effects, which I attempted to capture and embellish with photoshop.

The way down also had some steep declines. It never seems as bad going up...

Back at the bottom. Later, Daisen.

My Students

(Tell Me Why) Ain't Nothin' but a Mistake...

We did a class week before last with my elective English course where we learned the lyrics to "I Want it that Way," that singular hit by that stellar quintet, the Backstreet Boys. The whole class stemmed from a previous class where, during introductions, one of my students told me she likes "Listening to music."
"What groups do you like?"
"Oh...Backstreet Boys--"
"Oh! Me too!"

My co-teacher, overhearing the conversation, suggested that since we were both such big fans (my student, by the way, is 13. She was 4 or 5 when the song first hit the charts, and even younger when BSB first stepped on the scene) that we should learn a song for class.

Right. So, as an introduction I played the music video for the class on my laptop. Which was all well and good until partway through. One of my students gasps and points at the screen--"Ah, Matt-sensei!"

Who was she pointing at?

Howie.

"Were you a backstreet boy?"
"No."
"Did you quit so you could teach?"
"No."
"And cut your hair after, too?"
"No. Well, I did cut my hair, but. No."
Of course, my stunning rendition of the song, rehearsed through many years of ultimate time-out songs with Dartmouth's Pain Train, did little to convince them otherwise.

Last week in (regular) class, we were doing a phone conversation (students come up with their own skits to act out, with two people making plans to meet somewhere). One of the transcripts looked something like this:

"Hello?"
"Hello. This is ____. Can I speak to ____?"
"Sure, just one moment."
...
"Hi! I'd love to"
"Tell me why"
"I want it that way"
"OK, see you there"
"OK, bye"

If it weren't so patently ridiculous, it would've been great. Or maybe it's great BECAUSE it's patently ridiculous?

The Elementary Schools, or: I Dominate 1st Graders in Dodge Ball

I visit 3 elementaries on Friday each week (this is why I need a car for work--there's no bus or train schedule flexible enough to accommodate me there). I <3 the elementary schools. My goodness, kids are just wonderfully full of energy (I'm well aware that they can wear on you, but hey, I only see each class once per week--energy stays high there). It's almost enough to make me reconsider pediatrics as a medical specialty. It's a lot more fun than the rest of my week--I'm super busy with all the school visits, but every class is basically a short lead-in (introducing new vocabulary, etc) to playing games in some form or another. Best part is, I get to play too!

When I was first starting, I had a free period at one of the schools and I was invited to join the first graders (yes, first graders) for gym. We played amoeba tag first (I was "it" to start--I'm not sure what was worse, not being able to catch any of them to start or being slowed down by them so much when I finally did get one and had to drag 'em around to get more), and then we played dodge ball.

I know what you're thinking--it must've been a slaughterfest--but I played left-handed so it was merely a massacre instead. Kids got a big kick out of it, though.
"Matt-sensei, sugoi!" (Matt, you're awesome!)

I've also been playing with the kids a fair bit at lunchtimes--I eat with one of the classes each Friday--which has left me rather sweaty for a few of my afternoon classes. Whoops.

Hair

So, some of you may not know this, but I was asked to cut my hair before I came to work here in Japan.

I went from this:



To this:



Today my supervisors' supervisors (IE, the Tottori Prefectural Board of Education folk--they're obviously above my local BOE, and definitely above my school's teachers) came to observe a class and chat with me a bit--afterwards, talking to one of my supervisors--a prefectural advisor for all of the JETs in Tottori, who, incidentally, was my primary liason before I came and forwarded the original request to cut--relayed to me comments from my Principal: glad he's getting involved, still seems a bit shy, ...man, am I glad he cut his hair!

Apparently my principal had been enraged at the prospect of me coming over with my dreads, and it was in part due to his vocal complaints to the placement service that I wound up hearing that I should cut my hair.

I'm glad my principal is happy with me, instead of really super pissed off.

Visiting in Iwami, Adventuring in Hyogo...

Sailing the sea of Japan, departing from the Port of Iwami-cho.

The waterfront is often very rocky, but it makes for some great formations.

They're big on squid here. This guy spins and air dries the scallywags.

They sell squid ink (or maybe octopus ink) ice cream. Tastes just like Vanilla, but...

...it blackens the tongue.


Later, we went to the beach, and got to catch a beautiful sunset (as well as throw the frisbee around, which was much needed).

On our way to Takeda castle...but somehow we wound up lost. Adventure, huzzah!

Aha! Found it!




There's many a great view to be had from this mountaintop castle.

Here's the layout of Takeda castle. Totally worth the trip.

Buddhist meditation, mountain climbing, and Soulja Boyin'

I climbed a mountain and learned about Buddhism this weekend.

Mitokusan (Mt. Mitoku if you got your map in the US) is a fairly easy climb--there's some steep parts where you should probably know a thing or two about climbing to get through easily, but it's farily short--and there are a lot of temples on the way. We (about 40 JETs) slept in one of the temples at the base of the mountain the day before (and had a half-hour session of zazen meditation the morning after), and we were inundated with Buddhist culture and perspectives by the monk who was in charge of us. He gave a few explanations in Japanese, which were likely woefully translated given our translator's continual need to have somebody else in the group translate the specialized Buddhist-related terminology (the "main" translator is French originally, so translating from one second language into another had to have been hard on its own)...at one point we traced what I'm pretty sure is a Buddhist Sutra...which was all chinese characters...it took a while. And we had to do it sitting Japanese-style on our legs, so...well. It took me a good five minutes before I started feeling my feet again after a good 25-30 minutes of focused tracing.

Highlight was definitely the evening--as part of the weekend, we do an "international exchange" with the Japanese there...they do some traditional dances and perform for us, and each of the countries represented by the internationals present (we had the US, England, France, South Africa, and the Phillipines, among others) gave their own performances.

For the US, we did Soulja Boy. Not even kidding. We practiced and introduced it as "a traditional American dance," did the dance, and then proceeded to teach the Japanese...there is video of me doing Soulja Boy with probably an 80-year-old Japanese man behind me. When I can send a link, I shall, but for the meantime you'll have to settle for the picture attached. They actually learned super-quickly, very impressive.'

A package came for me today.

There was a note inside my door, asking me to let them know when to drop it off again (all in japanese, so I just called the number assuming).

Guy picks up...I explain I can't speak Japanese very well...

He goes, "Oh! gaijin-san!" ("Oh! Mr. foreigner!")

"Hai. gaijin-san desu."

The package was at my door about 5 minutes later.

Rosham Tray

All you Dartmouth Ultimate people should know that the students do rosham tray here--it's not even a question. Stack the trays, group rosham (Jan-Ken-Pon! Aiko deshou! No primes between throws), loser takes them all up for cleaning.

I'd like to note that I am 1-0 in rosham tray thus far in Japan. ("Rosham" is Rock-Paper-Scissors for the non-ultimate folks on this list.)

Work Impressions, So Far.

This week has been pretty easy so far--outside of a bit of help for a couple students who are participating in speech contests, and giving a couple classes where I did a more in-depth self-introduction, with Sports Day being this weekend the kids have a reduced class load to begin with and many of these first classes back are actually tests, leaving me with little to do. Far different from the Trips/orientation experience at Dartmouth, no?

Sports Day, incidentally, is a day (Saturday for my middle schools; Sunday for my elementaries) where the various grades compete by homeroom in a variety of activities. Today I got to watch some of the practice--in addition to learning and performing a dance that seems suspiciously like contradancing, I saw them do a giant version of jump rope where the homeroom has to all jump in time to clear the rope (there are about 25 students to a homeroom) and a task that involved handing a ball down a line from one end of the field to the other, with students dashing to the end of the line as soon as they handed off to continue the flow. Pretty entertaining stuff, and actually rather fascinating as far as understanding Japanese culture goes. I'm not sure I can put it all into words just yet, but if I feel sufficiently capable I'll indulge my rambling urges with a long bit on that at a later point.


Some more general work impressions/factoids: the kids all have the same uniform, down to the shoes they wear in class and in the gym. Girls wear the sailor suit, which you might be familiar with; guys wear white collared shirts with long pants. The kids are wonderful by the by--really cute. They're all a little timid and a little intimidated, I think, but in a fascinated kind of way that will lead to some fun connections, I think. In contrast to America, where teachers have their own rooms and the students go to them, in Japan students stay in their homerooms the entire day (outside of going to the gym, or needing to use art supplies, ec) and the teachers come to them. We teachers all share a teacher's room, all the desks organized into a few groups. With few classes and little lesson prep to do at the moment, I've spent most of my time there idly sitting at my desk on my laptop (thank god for the internet!). I can speak a bit of Japanese, which is helping my entering a new community somewhat as the language barrier is not so high as to be insurmountable without the aid of one of the Japanese Teachers of English (JTE's, the teachers who I work with in the classroom)...but I'm still often left to my own devices and wind up bored with some frequency as the rest of the teachers seemingly have a far more vast workload than I. And somehow I get paid more than they do...go figure.

Oh, and so far none of my classes have recognized me with long hair when I show them a picture of me and my family at graduation. And Mom, you and Dad might be pleased to know that, in addition to being very impressed with how young you both are, one kid in my class today mistook Dad for an older brother. Yep.

Skype!

I have it. You should, too! You pay for a mic and optional camera (or have it already installed on your computer), and pay nothing else to make computer-to-computer calls from anywhere to anywhere. You can find me at username: frizbninja or search me by my email address.

My Baby

I think her name will be Betty.

The Rice Cooker

Wonderful. Savior of my stomach, appeaser of appetites! The rice cooker.

Of course, what's a rice cooker without rice? A few handfuls will do me pretty well. Add a cup of water, push the button, and wait...

...and voila! God's gift to hungry bachelors.

Travels to the Beach

Beautiful Kozomi Beach.

Sea Urchin? But she's too far away!


Apparently you can break 'em open and eat them! How cruel. Also, it's a lot of work crushing that tough guy shell to get to the sensitive urchin interior, and there isn't much to be had for it.

I have a waterproof camera. Whee!

This weekend I went to the beach for a party there--one of the Japanese girls who is apparently pretty good friends with a lot of the JET guys invited a bunch of people to the beach to camp out. There was a pretty good mix of JETs and Japanese, so it was nice to have some new people to talk to and to work a bit of Japanese practice in there. Fireworks were lit. We camped out (despite the rain. Tottori just dealt with the remnants of a typhoon) and the next day it cleared up a bit and we spent most of the morning and afternoon on the beach. I finally got to bust out my disc and throw for the first time in a month or so, too, which was remarkably liberating despite my being terribly rusty/out of shape.

Meeting the Staff

Today I started "work" proper, which meant going to a few schools to do introductions with the staff (more of the jiko-shoukai; I've repeated the phrases giving my name and where I'm from and "Nice to meet you" more often than i can remember). Josh, the other JET in my town, and I went with our supervisor to the various schools, hitting mostly elementary schools (Josh is teaching at 5 elementaries and 1 junior high; I've got 3 elems and 2 JH) along with one of my junior high schools. The kids are adorable. A lot of clubs practicing and whatnot happening these days before class starts--seems every school has a gym and/or a dirt patch which is apparently the Japanese idea of a practice field--so there were a fair number of the little kiddies running around, offering a "konnichi wa" or a "hello/good day" depending on how confident they were feeling. Apparently they're a lot more open when they're young than when they get to high school and become too cool for school, so they should be fun to work with.

Meeting the staff itself was kind of an awkwardly formal affair; we were universally interrupting some meeting or another for introductions, and after stealing somebody's thunder would proceed to stammer through basic introductions (we were applauded after our introductions by the group, which was kind of cool. I think they appreciate the fact that Josh and I can speak the language with some competency, as neither of us have the glaring foreigner accent). The best was when one of the schools' directors turned to her staff (seems the staff always feed off of however the kacho (principal) or whoever is the highest-ranked person available for initiative on what they should do) and told them to introduce themselves, in English! Usually we just introduce and bounce so as not to interfere too much with meetings, but this time it was fun to see the tables turned and watch THEM stammer through an introduction in a foreign language (most of them didn't know more than "my name is" and even that was with prompting from the head).

On the plus side, I'm getting really good at introducing myself!

Well, the pendulum's swung the other way.

My predecessor finally left on Thursday, so the past few days have been pretty slow/lonely after a hectic start to my time here. Especially considering that I still can't drive yet, outside of the occasional trip to the grocery store I've only traveled once--taking the train to a local festival in Chizu (which you might recognize as the town I wound up in when I got lost on the train--this time, at least, I knew how to get there!).

The festival in Chizu was pretty fun--a small group of JETs met there, and we perused the stands, ate some yakisoba (noodles with some meat and seasoning, pretty good stuff) and shaved ice, watched various town groups perform various choreographed dances with varying levels of proficiency and energy...and then we split. It was a fun evening, and Chizu is neither too far (about 40 minutes by train) nor too expensive (1200 yen, about $12.00 round trip) to get to for me.

My Japanese has been coming back fairly quickly. It's only been a couple weeks now, and inasmuch as I've been able to interact with Japanese speakers, I'm returning with some quickness to a conversational mastery. The tough part is filling in the gaps in my vocabulary, but once i get my first paycheck (due this Thursday!) I'll be off to get an electronic dictionary for that purpose (currently i use my cell phone's E-J dictionary--cell phones are awesome here by the way, mine gets TV!--but the cell phone dictionary goes from English to Japanese in kanji, which i haven't learned all the readings for--or else I wouldn't need the dictionary in the first place!).


More anecdoes...

I have a rice cooker (as does, I'm pretty sure, every single household in the country). It is spectacular. I put in some rice, add a corresponding amount of water, close the top and push a button. Later, I open the lid and enjoy perfectly steamed sticky rice, perfect for eating with chopsticks. (aside: Japanese people always seem to get a kick out of foreigners that use chopsticks well. Unlike my first time in the country, when I got a lot of amazed questions from my homestay families, so far I've only noticed them noticing. I imagine they assume that, since I've been in the country before, of course I would know how to use chopsticks properly!). At the same time that I was figuring out how to use the rice cooker--yes, it's simple, but I still couldn't read the kanji to know WHICH button to push (one is "start," one is for "taimu (time)" in katakana, which I can read; the other is for "warm"), I was also preparing some curry mix. Curry rice just so happens to be my favorite meal here, so the revelation that I could make it for myself, with ease and with regularity, was quite possibly the best news I've gotten yet!


Last week Jimmy and I hung out with a Finnish exchange student who was living with a homestay here--he left Japan to return home, however, because his homestay apparently sucks, restricting his freedoms to the point where they don't allow him to have his own phone or use the internet (read: complete isolation outside of his family and his schoolmates). We took him around town on some errands and got lunch, and when we finally got back, around dinnertime, they chatted us up and invited us all in for dinner. according to Jimmy, he's never been invited in for a dinner like that, ever. He thinks they wanted us there to keep Johannes busy while they made preparations for him to leave. Oi.

The family had some little kids who were SUPER cute and we played with them for a little bit in between bits of mixed-language conversation between my broken Japanese (Johannes had some too) and one of the home stay mom's broken English. at one point the obaachan (grandma) started going on about the war and how the perception of English has gone from unliked to ok with passing generations (though Jimmy suspected she was just being nice--she's the main reason Johannes doesn't like his homestay, she's too controlling). Kind of intense. And then they came up to us and were all "well, you must be busy! sorry for taking your time" (in japanese) and we were all, "oh, we don't have anything to do, it's cool!" What we didn't realize was that they were subtly trying to tell us it was time to go. Eventually they came to us: "We have to move our car, and you're blocking the driveway, but we don't want you to trouble yourself to re-park afterward since dinner is over, so...good bye!" Hilarious. They couldn't just say it was time for us to go. I'd forgotten how wonderfully indirect Japanese culture can be sometimes.


More transportation fun: Before I left for Chizu I made sure to copy down the train schedule so I'd know what time my trains would arrive (I had to do a transfer). As I was waiting at the Koge station, making sure to ask each train I thought might have a chance of being mine if it was heading to Chizu, one conducor told me that the train headed for Chizu would show up on the other platform soon. So I waited...and a big, commercial-class cruiser comes up, the express train. Figuring, "Hey, it's the right time. And the right place. This must be my train!" I boarded. Glancing out the window where the other train was still parked, I see the conductor from before looking at me through his window--shaking his head and making an X with his hands! I quickly disembark and he runs over to tell me that the much cheaper local train would be by in 10 more minutes, and that I should wait for that. All in all I saved paying an extra $10.00 to shave some 15 minutes off the trip, definitely a good choice.


I live in a small town. As such, Josh and I are the only foreigners within the town limits (I'm fairly certain). We live in different districts, and don't see each other with any regularity at the moment, so I'm the only foreigner for at least a couple miles. Case in point: yesterday I was walking to the grocery store. As I'm walking I notice a man on a motorcycle pull into and out of the post office as I walk past. About a minute after I see him pull out, he pulls up next to me from behind:
"Excuse me, are you Brown-san?"
"Who? no, I'm Mackey."
"Oh! yes. Mackey, Matthew Brian (in Japanese katakana: Ma-ki Mashu- Buraian. He misread my middle name as 'Brown, and also figured it was my first name'). Sign here, please."
He hands me the letter and rides off. I guess he had gone to my house to get my signature and, when he realized I wasn't there, figured I had to be the foreigner walking down the street--because is there any other foreigner in town? Nope. I stand out.

The Tottori Sand Dunes

Before we went to the sand dune, we went to the sand museum. My favorite sculpture by far was the great wall of china. Note the small sand people on the steps!


After observing several sculptures we got to try our own. Lisa and I made a model of Tottori's mascot, a bird that is also a pear. How about 'dem wings?


There's the dune! Now to head to the top...


Phew! That was a long way to go!


The top of the dune offers a spectacular view of the Sea of Japan, though, so it's totally worth the trip.


Afterwards, we all sprung back to the souvenir shops and got some Nashi (pear) Ice Cream, easily one of the most delicious things I've ever had (and it's not just dehydration and fatigue from the sand dune climb talking!). (I got two)