Busy

I was starting to get a bit bored of Kumamoto but recently things have become more interesting and I have been to many new places and meeting interesting people such as magazine editors and musicans. I think I have added about ten new phone numbers in the last couple of weeks!

One of the great joys of living here is the amount of free drinks I am able to procure ( I dont know how, other foreginers tell me that my gift is unique.) Sometimes people will buy me the odd whisky as a sign of goodwill, othertimes however I may not have spoken to someone for the whole night and the barman will tell me that the person on the other side of the room has ordered me a drink. They may give me a smile or exchange a few pleasantaries but thats all. The best situations are of course when I have been drinking with some people who then insist they pay for all my booze for the night. Such a case happened the other night; in fact even when my drinking buddies left and I stayed on I was informed that I had an unlimited tab for the night!

I dont know what is my secret, its true its easy to sound impressive here, you can talk a lot of rubbish and people will believe you. For example I could pretend to be the 13th Earl of Willybumbum, and say that i am the love child of elton john and dam edna everage and recieve no dubious looks. In fact I could probably say that I live in a pair of giant underpants with the teletubbies and people would still believe me.

Yes, Japanese people dont get sarcasm!

Actually its best not to try and do these things. One tip i will give is to say you like all Japanese food even Natto followed by "I like shouchu" and then add the killer word "potato" (potato shochu is very strong.) Potato (imo) maybe one of the most important words in Japan, like "the one ring" it can wield enormous power but is corrupting as it can lead to much inebriation.
Maybe I am becoming the Lord of the Potatoes...

The only dissapointing thing about Japan so far for me is that I havent heard anyone fart. I was trying to get a friend to do one earlier on but she declined. Its becoming a bit of a quest. Maybe there is only one fart in Japan, hiding somewhere in the mountains and so I will have to travel around japan armed with my knowledge of the word potato in order to find it.

Ive been here for 6 months I think i am getting culture understanding shock, things are becoming clearer and I am surprising myself. Its strange and just like when I arrived I have had difficulties sleeping and have lost my appetite. The other night I went clubbing and had too many ginger ales,stayed up all night feeling like a gerbil on speed and then had to
teach eleven toddlers english the next morning. Trying to be genki and sing jolly songs when you look Moomrah from thundercats and sound like a transgendered Marge Simpson is a wee bit of a challenge!

I am starting to feel like a bit more of a therapist and less of a teacher. Sometimes I think students want to come and learn english in order to relax and express themselves in a way that they are not accustomed to doing in Japanese. Its satisyfying seeing people get some kind of cathartic experience out of the lesson. Unfortunately however I have had three lessons when I have asked my students how they are and they have told me that a close relative or friend has died. What is worse is that on two of these occassions I had forgotten that I had chosen a text regarding death. To say I felt bad would be an understatement.

Viva the Wiener!

So I have been back in Kumamoto for 10 or so days now and this is the first time I have felt quite bored! Still life is treating me pretty well here and teaching is a bit more interesting for me as I am working in a bigger school this month that has more variety of student levels and abilities.

There are various types of students in Japan. Most are well able but are shy and are too scared to make mistakes , they tend to freeze if they are not 100 percent sure they are right. Others seem to be more naturally confident and chatty and progress quicker. Others just dont really hava a clue poor things! In a lot of schools there is a general policy of only english in the lessons but how can a beginner have any concrete certainty of any words??? For example to explain words such as interesting in english is very difficult, especially when the learner has a limited foundation vocab bank in the first place. It can often be highly time consuming and inefficient to explain words in such a way. There are wonderful moments in classes sometimes when I know my students dont understand something (they might say maybe they understand which means no in Japanese) and we both end up staring vacantly into each others eyes for what seems an eternity and then the student will finally respond with something like "ehhhhhh....I like penguins."

Then there are the rare students who think they can speak english better than they actually can and are overly confident. They often try and assail you in the street and then try and spend half an hour telling you about a documentary they saw on wigwams. When I was in Kyoto I met this guy at the train station who had studied for a Phd in London and started lecturing me about the place in english at 100 decibels " THERE IS A BIG CLOCK IN LONDON CALLED BIG BEN. YES AND CATHEDRAL.. ST PAULS. I KNOW MANY MANY PLACES, MANY MANY MANY THINGS." then he started lecturing my french friend on how to speak his own language "TO SAY HELLO YOU MUST SAY BONJULE. BONJULE!! SAVAC! MERCY! I KNOW MANY MANY MANY THINGS! I almost thought he was going to say next "I know everything, embrace me as your new messiah!" He then made us proof read his new english dictionary in the middle of the station whereupon i had to kindly note to him that to cuddle was not quite a synonym for to thrash.

And now for something funny...

NHK bilingual news is usualy the most dire news service of disinformation I have ever come across. 90 percent of headline stories concern with the weather and can be broadly categorised as earthquake/typhoon stories, "Ooh its hot today isnt it, keep cool!" stories or "Ooh its bloody cold today, wrap up warm" stories.
They are obsessed with the most mundane details: "Prime Minister Koizumi scrached his arse today three times at a ninety degree angle and also blew his nose a further two times (no bogey was reported)."
They are masters of understatement "This man says he is displeased that he has lost his family from the typhoon." Or just plain confusing: "The government advises all people in the earthquake affected regions that they should not leave their houses and evacuate as soon as possible."
The other day though, they were unintentionally funny. Apparently good luck trinkets are becoming big business as school kids round the country face the preliminary university entrance exams. They are buying Kit Kats because apperently there is a Japanese word that sounds like the chocolate bars that means good luck. Similarly people are buying train tickets to places like the "hill of hope."

Children all over the country are also enthusiatically scoffing down frankfurters because they want to be wieners [winners.]

So lets take this message of hope and all tuck in and become wieners!

Some parents however I have spoken to are disallowing their children to eat food because if you rearrange the word you get doof and they surely dont want their kids to doof up their exams. However they are letting their children take speed (supiido) to give them an extra head start. However many parents disagree and instead want their children to take heroin so that they can be a "hero in" their exams.

Kansai Travels

Well im finally coming to the end of six days travelling in Kansai and its been great to see what the rest of Japan has to offer.

Arrived in Osaka on the overnight bus last thursday and spent a couple of days there. Osaka isnt pretty, huge swaythes of concrete in all directions but it does seem like a lot of fun . Imagine a very sexed up version of Birmingham and maybe you get a rough analogy. The people too seemed very earthy and much more used to foreigners than Kyushuns... they know how to react!

Living in a big city such as Osaka is a completely different experience from living somewhere like Kumamoto. Both kinds of experiences have their pros and cons , it depends what you want to get out of whilst living in Japan.

Had a rather unusual experience in Osaka as I was pretty much assaulted by a guy in the subway who wanted to practice his rendition of JFKs inauguration speech (dont ask why). We went to a cafe and he bought me a coffee whilst I patiently listened. He then asked me if i wanted to meet up later and i reluctantly accepted thinking he wanted to get a free english lesson. I met him in his hotel, which turned out to my surprise to be the most expensive hotel in Osaka. After a few minutes of conversation he invited me to stay in his Tokyo flat "but im afraid... my maids dont cook very well." It turns out he is a lecturer at the university of Tokyo (japanese cambridge) and a man of considerable academic importance. He then preceded to take me to an Ookonomiyaki restaurant "lets get drunk" he said, and we feasted on ookonomiyaki pankakes untill I was almost sick. He was a rather socially awkward fellow which is often the case with people with brilliant minds and was silent for a lot of the time and the rest of the time he was trying to get me to chat up Japanese women "talk to her! say something in Japanese!". The next day he promised to meet me but kept on postponing our meeting, telling me to ring later. It turns out he was too busy as he was asking for permission for someones hand in marriage!

Seeing so many foreigners in Osaka was quite a shock. There are quite a few as there is a televideo teaching centre that employs 600 teachers. What was even more of a shock was going to a nightclub on new years eve and finding the majority of people were gaijin. Of course new years eve wouldnt be new years eve without being crap and it was! Unfortunately i witnessed the full power and potential of the gaijin syndromed man at work that night. Imagine that in the 1970s a whole shipload of spanish builders all called Carlos travel to Essex and settle there to teach how to cook paella. To the innocent Essex woman (incidentally whose Japanese equivalent would be from Osaka) Carlos is the height of european exoticism, dark brooding and sexy. To the spanish however he is just another greasy gringo loser. Carlos however begins to think of himself as a latin lover god and his ego expands well beyond the limits of his appendage creating the perfect nobend. In Japan Carlos could be Mike, Jim or even Dwayne!

Also went to Kobe which was actually quite attractive for a Japanese city (most Japanese cities tend to look the same and are rather dull) but I think this owed more to its interesting geographical location than to its architecture. Also visted Kyoto and saw many temples, got lost trying to find other temples and then infuriated when I got completely lost not trying not to find a temple! Kyoto was pleasant but again it looks like any other Japanese city; it just happens to be littered with interesting sites and temples and shrines. Kyoto people I found to be a lot colder and stuck up than other Japanese people I have met. I have now therefore developed a sociological theory: when you have a place rammed with a lot of culture, the people obviously develop a lot of pride. But this pride can easily get out of hand and mutate into arrogance, a feeling of cultural superiority and up-your-own-arse-edness.

Ergo: The French.

It was also interesting meeting tourists here. Before I came to Japan I had met a few people who hadnt really enjoyed their visit. Now I can understand why because I think coming to Japan as a tourist, particularly if you havent been to Asia can be quite an overwhelming experience as well as a big culture shock. Talking to others really made me realise how much I have learnt about Japanese culture and also how much I have yet to learn!

Leaving Kyushu has made me appreciate what a cool place it is to be. Kyushu people are amazingly friendly if a little shyer and less used to foreigners. Maybe I feel more tempted to move on now eventually because its far from where all the action is in Japan but I feel very glad I came here first because its a great place to learn about Japanese culture and meet people.