The festival season is coming to an end at the moment, but there was a cracking one in the city centre the other night which I wandered around. During it, a big dance competition takes place - big dance troupes of about 40 or 50 engage in these amazing routines with drums and singing, all while wearing outlandish costumes in 30C+ heat. Impressive stuff. Here's a couple of videos of the dancing - the seats were all full up so the only way to get a decent gander was to keep scooting up and down the walkways. Hence the slightly Blair Witch-esque footage.
(NB - there's sound so watch out if you're at work!)
Tuesday 28 August 2007
Free food and tears....
Today was a proud day indeed - not only did I manage to have a little conversation in Japanese with the guy in the Lawson near the school I was working in, but we bonded so well that he gave me some free food!! Result!
When I walked in he walked past me and exclaimed "wow, big!" which made me laugh. Then at the counter he asked me how old I was and how long I'd been in Japan. I told him and asked if he spoke English; he said "no, only Japanese" but in English - I decided not to try and explain the logical inconsistency in that. Then he asked me how old I thought the lady working there was - I said I didn't know and that it was dangerous to say; this was the clincher which made him chuckle and give me a free tasty snack. And very tasty it was too. The secret ingredient was free-ness.
I had my favourite and smartest class today - 8 kids all about 6 or 7 who are really well behaved and proper clever. One of them had been on holiday the previous week and when that happens you have to send them a little postcard saying what they missed and a little message. She came in this week with a postcard for me saying thank you - aah, so cute!
Anyway, one of the kids had been getting a little too energetic in previous lesson - he's probably the smartest kid in the class and not badly behaved; just needed to chill a bit so I asked the staff to tell him if he didn't calm down, I'd send him out. Of course, they can't really take one kid aside and say that, so she just spoke to all the kids very nicely reminding them of the rules while I smiled in a friendly way to reassure them they hadn't done anything wrong.
After she left they were all a bit quite like they'd been told off, so I felt a little guilty. This was compounded when I asked them for their homework books and one of them had forgotten hers - she started crying! Aiee!! Normally she's the life and soul, but I guess maybe she thought she'd been naughty - her and her two friends usually sneak up on me before the lesson and shout silly things at me - usually "monkey", but sometimes it's "monster" and today "ghost" was inexplicably added into the mix. It's tricky to know in these situations whether to grab a staff member and let the little 'un have a time out, or just throw them back into it - I decided to start a game and soon enough she was laughing away and having fun - relief!
Today is also the one week in four that we have to teach teenagers - maintaining discipline in these classes is an interesting experience as I always feel like I'm slightly skirting the precipice of keeping them under control and that a moment's hesitation will make them realise "actually, this lanky guy can't understand anything we say - let's call him a dickhead and talk amongst ourselves". So far though, I've kept disorder to a minimum through a combination of a) running them ragged with some games; b) shouting; c) ridiculing the ones that get cocky. Oh, and occasionally resorting to mild physical violence by bonking them on the head with my teacher's manual. So far so good - but maybe next time the revolution will begin....
When I walked in he walked past me and exclaimed "wow, big!" which made me laugh. Then at the counter he asked me how old I was and how long I'd been in Japan. I told him and asked if he spoke English; he said "no, only Japanese" but in English - I decided not to try and explain the logical inconsistency in that. Then he asked me how old I thought the lady working there was - I said I didn't know and that it was dangerous to say; this was the clincher which made him chuckle and give me a free tasty snack. And very tasty it was too. The secret ingredient was free-ness.
I had my favourite and smartest class today - 8 kids all about 6 or 7 who are really well behaved and proper clever. One of them had been on holiday the previous week and when that happens you have to send them a little postcard saying what they missed and a little message. She came in this week with a postcard for me saying thank you - aah, so cute!
Anyway, one of the kids had been getting a little too energetic in previous lesson - he's probably the smartest kid in the class and not badly behaved; just needed to chill a bit so I asked the staff to tell him if he didn't calm down, I'd send him out. Of course, they can't really take one kid aside and say that, so she just spoke to all the kids very nicely reminding them of the rules while I smiled in a friendly way to reassure them they hadn't done anything wrong.
After she left they were all a bit quite like they'd been told off, so I felt a little guilty. This was compounded when I asked them for their homework books and one of them had forgotten hers - she started crying! Aiee!! Normally she's the life and soul, but I guess maybe she thought she'd been naughty - her and her two friends usually sneak up on me before the lesson and shout silly things at me - usually "monkey", but sometimes it's "monster" and today "ghost" was inexplicably added into the mix. It's tricky to know in these situations whether to grab a staff member and let the little 'un have a time out, or just throw them back into it - I decided to start a game and soon enough she was laughing away and having fun - relief!
Today is also the one week in four that we have to teach teenagers - maintaining discipline in these classes is an interesting experience as I always feel like I'm slightly skirting the precipice of keeping them under control and that a moment's hesitation will make them realise "actually, this lanky guy can't understand anything we say - let's call him a dickhead and talk amongst ourselves". So far though, I've kept disorder to a minimum through a combination of a) running them ragged with some games; b) shouting; c) ridiculing the ones that get cocky. Oh, and occasionally resorting to mild physical violence by bonking them on the head with my teacher's manual. So far so good - but maybe next time the revolution will begin....
Saturday 25 August 2007
Japanese weather....
The summer in Japan is unbelievably hot - and apparently this year it's especially so. All the veteran staff warn you that it's going to be bad, but I don't think anything can prepare you for just how sweltering it is. In Tajimi, the city nearby which I work in on Wednesday (lucky me!), the temperature got up to 40C while I was away. This is a record, one of the hottest summers ever. There are two main problems with Japanese summers. 1) They're incredibly humid; the feeling of oppression as you dash from one air conditioned building to the next is quite formidable and often it's only when you sit down and the negligible breeze made by your walking disappears that you realise how thick the air around you is. 2) Even though we're dashing about teaching kids, we still have to wear some semblance of a suit, which means trousers and a shirt are mandatory (but not a tie, at least not for kids' classes). So traipsing to the station with your trousers sticking to your legs is another fun part of the season - yay!
I'm not sure if there's any physiological basis for this, but it does seem that Japanese people don't sweat quite as much as us gaijin. Usually when it gets hot they have a little towel, like a flannel which they use to delicately dab the beads of sweat forming on their foreheads. Meanwhile, I'm literally dripping with perspiration like I've just passed a house brick or something - every once in a while you'll see some chubby Japanese guy (a rarity in itself outside of the sumo ring) with a damp patch on his chest, but by and large they seem to cope with the temperature pretty well. The hot weather does however provide an easy topic of conversation when in the local convenience store; the Japanese, like us Brits love to talk about the weather. Just using single words though - usually either "samuii" (cold) or "atsuii" (hot). I also looked up humid: "mushiatsuii" - check it out, one quick peek in the dictionary and I increased my vocabulary by a third!
I'm not sure if there's any physiological basis for this, but it does seem that Japanese people don't sweat quite as much as us gaijin. Usually when it gets hot they have a little towel, like a flannel which they use to delicately dab the beads of sweat forming on their foreheads. Meanwhile, I'm literally dripping with perspiration like I've just passed a house brick or something - every once in a while you'll see some chubby Japanese guy (a rarity in itself outside of the sumo ring) with a damp patch on his chest, but by and large they seem to cope with the temperature pretty well. The hot weather does however provide an easy topic of conversation when in the local convenience store; the Japanese, like us Brits love to talk about the weather. Just using single words though - usually either "samuii" (cold) or "atsuii" (hot). I also looked up humid: "mushiatsuii" - check it out, one quick peek in the dictionary and I increased my vocabulary by a third!
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