Lots of photos, continued

Yo. Continued from last time.

This is the little store front of the soba noodle place. The big brown ball by the door is made of pine needles - the ball is originally made of fresh pine needles, and apparently when they turn brown, the sake of that year is good to drink. The name of the place is Sobazen, which is on the big wooden sign above the door: So-ba-ze-n.

This is the house next door, which is pretty nice, but I don't know if anyone lives there. I never see a car in the driveway, and I went up a few times to introduce myself, but no one's ever there. It's a cool house - it even has a little bamboo grove on premesis. How many people in America can say they have one of those? Swimming pools are okay, but can you film your own ninja-style fight scene in it? I didn't think so.

A little side-of-the-road Shinto shrine, which you see interspersed in the city. Pretty cool.

Inside the aforementioned shrine. The box is for donations, and there's a little bridge leading up to it, over a little moat.

Plaques by the shrine. I used to think they were prayers or something, but under closer examination, they are just to indicate who donated a lot of money to the shrine.

Shibukawa has a fair quantity of stray cats. They don't seem to be in very bad shape, so they're kind of cute.

Clothes dryers are not common in Japan at all - people dry their laundry where they can.

Poster for a Kabuki show

This is a 2-story building that I was unable to determine the purpose of - it's not really important anyway, what I found noteworthy was the slide. The only thing I can think is it's a fire escape route, as in: "OH MY GOD, THE BUILDING'S ON FIRE WE HAVE TO GET OUT EVERYBODY COME ON OR WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE wheeeeeeeeeee SOMEBODY CALL 119 GET EVERYBODY OUT" etc.

This is a nice single-family house in Shibukawa - there are a fair amount of these. Each property is surrounded by a stone wall with a gate. Some properties have been in the same family for over 200 years.

This photo illustrates two points: one, that major street signs are bilingual, which is a lifesaver, and also that there are so many soaring views of the mountains around Shibukawa that you just stop noticing after a while. I've never lived around mountains before, it's really nice.

Some of the vending machines that are really, REALLY common in Japan. Like, three on every corner common. I really don't know how they can all pull a profit - I certainly don't buy forty dollars' worth of soda, coffee, beer, and cigarettes from 15 different vending machines over the course of a month, and that's about what would be necessary for profitablilty. It's a mystery.

I thought this was cool - people shape the trees in front of their houses over time to look more picturesque. They do it with bamboo poles. In a decade or so, this tree will be handsome and stately, with a topiary look typical of pine trees in Japan.

Some examples of finished product. Apparently, they use some of the same techniques in Bonsai.

Well, that's about all I have. See you next week!

Lots of photos

Hey guys. I'm feeling lazy today, and don't really feel like typing a chronicle of my experiences, so I'm just going to shoot a large quantity of photos your way and call it a post. I took a walk around Shibukawa yesterday because it was nice weather, and took some photos of things I found noteworthy in Uber-typical Shibukawa for your viewing pleasure.

This is the road that runs by my apartment, typical of anywhere except for the cars are on the wrong side.

This is a pretty typical street, except it has a nice view facing West. That's mount Akagi.

There are a few Christian churches scattered around town, but they are in the minority. See that big mirror on the orange post? That's to let you kind of see what is around blind corners, which are everywhere in Shibukawa. It's not as effective as it looks.

For some reason, construction equipment has some crazy color schemes of purple, green, yellow, etc. around here. The other day, I saw a crane that was painted entirely iridescent purple with sparkles embedded in the paint. I don't think that paint job should belong even in "Pimp my Ride," let alone the construction industry.

Some people have their own little private shrines to Inari, the Shinto Fox God, outside their house.

Just to illustrate how prevalent stonework is around here, this is a little graveyard that's just behind my apartment complex.

This is a little soba noodle place near my house. This is to illustrate that the little banners that Samurai used to wear on their backs in ancient times are used to advertise Everything around here.

Blogger's being obstinate and not letting me post any more photos in this entry, so I'll post more entries. Nyeh.

Kanashima Sports Festival

Hello again, gang! Time once again for the (pseudo-)weekly update on whatever's on my mind. To continue from last time, here is a photo of some of the teaching staff at Kanashima JHS.


Actually, it's a photo of a photo, but whatever. Try to guess which one is me! You'll never guess. Whenever I look at this, the old Sesame Street song pops into my head: "One of these things is not like the others, One of these things just doesn't belong..." To tell the truth, most of these people (the ones that aren't labeled) are just members of the PTA or the local board of education. This photo was taken for the 60th year anniversary of Kanashima, which was a big deal. I don't really know why they invited me to be in the picture, I think I kind of spoil it, but the secretary just kind of dragged me in. I like that pretty orange tree in the background, though - it's called a momiji, it's kind of a Japanese maple, and it changes color very dramatically - during the fall, when this picture was taken, people sometimes wander around the countryside viewing and photographing momiji. I think that's kind of cool. The location of this photo is at the front gate of the school, and the photographer chose it specifically because of the momiji. It's a nice touch.

I've started a new policy at Kanashima Junior High School - in order to motivate the students to talk to me and improve their English communication skills (also just to motivate them to start a conversation with me, instead of vice-versa - the kids want to talk to me, but they're really shy, and I guess afraid of what their classmates will think if they talk to the big weird foreigner. This extra motivation kind of gives them the excuse they need), I've implemented something called "holler dollars." You give me a holler, I give you a holler dollar. Basically, if they come and talk to me outside of class, and use a sentence from their grade level, I'll give them a little sheet of paper. Each one has a number. At the end of every month, I will give away four CD's for holler dollars: one for the person who has the most in each grade level, and one lucky draw. So far it's been pretty successful - I've given away over 100 in a week and a half. Surprising, I would call that. It makes the students eager to see me coming down the hallway, which just brightens my day considerably, which gives me more energy, which makes classes more fun - it's creating an upward spiral. Woo!

A couple of notes on activities at the Junior High School - as I said, there is pretty much something going on every week. One of the biggest, though, was the tai-dai-kai (?), the sports festival. It's held in summer every year, and it's something that all the students kind of get into. It's a full day of athletic events, and the classes compete against each other for the title of champion class that year. The students are divided up into classes, and each class stays in the same room for every class - the teachers come to the classrooms, instead of the students going to the teachers' rooms. The students spend a good deal of time with the people in their class, so each class tends to develop strong bonds and kind of a group identity. It kind of reinforces the group mentality that I see so often in Japan. So at the tai-dai-kai, the individual students competed in events, but at the end, points were tallied, and the CLASS that had the most points took home the cup. I found that somewhat interesting - group accomplishment was rewarded more than individual accomplishment. It was a heck of a lot of fun. As I said, it was held in summer, so these photos are slightly out of date, but here are some of the highlights:

The ceremony at the start of the games. Very, um... ceremonious.

One of the more active events was the bo-hiki, or "pole pull". Basically, two teams are lined up about 50 yards apart, and a line of poles is put down the middle. At the sound of the starters pistol, both teams rush to get as many poles back to their side of the field as they can in one minute. The last few poles is always a struggle, with about 10 students from each team dragging on them. Hilarity often ensues. ^_^


The high jump was a big event this year - the last two students were jumping outrageously high, and it was a real nail-biter. All other events stopped so that everyone could watch. This guy eventually won, with a cleared height of 155 cm, or about 5 feet 1. Not olympic quality, but I sure as heck couldn't do that.


The audience for the high-jump.

After most of the events were complete, there was a big, school-wide dance, that was more like a promenade, I guess. The girls would hold hands with the guys, and they would walk around in a circle for about 30 feet, do a little foot step combo, bow/curtsy, and move on to the next partner. All done to the tune of "Turkey in the Straw," I kid you not. Personally, I thought it was corny in the extreme, but apparently it's popular among the students. I guess in middle school everyone's a little shy, and that is magnified in Japan. A little school-sponsored flirtation might be just what the doctor ordered. Kinda like the excuse to break the ice with the holler dollars.

This is how they kept score - tallying with boards on the third floor of the building. The colors around each class correspond to the headbands they are wearing. The Japanese word for headband is 'hachimaki,' and they are a big deal. All the kids were really competetive once they got their headbands on - a couple of the classes even had little group pump-up ceremonies where they all donned their hachimaki at once. Headband = fighting spirit. That's pretty cool - I may have to start doing that, and see if it works.

Well, that's all for now, I'll tell you about the culture day or something next time, along with some of my personal activities. I did Tokyo with a friend of mine over the break and got some good photos there, and also I've seen some Kabuki, performed by a bunch of elementary schoolers! It was great!! It's getting late, though, so that'll have to wait until next time. Take care, everyone! Miss you all!

Car Photo, Kanashima JHS

Continuation of the post from a little while ago - check below for new segment before reading this. Or whatever, read this first if you don't mind a spoiler, see if I care.

Here's my little car! Woo! It don't look like much, but it gets about 500 miles to the gallon. Which is a good thing, because a gallon of gas costs about 500 dollars. It's gonna need snow tires soon, and I've already got an Ice scraper. Now, I don't have much experience in this area, and my company as usual doesn't have much in the way of helpful advice, so if anyone can think of any problems with cold-weather operation of a car that won't be solved by running it for five minutes before driving out, please, PLEASE let me know.

So, since I've been teasing you all about this for heaven knows how long, and I don't have much going on tonight, I will finally let you in on what my schools are like, and my experiences teaching English in Japan. Don't get too excited.

For the past 4 and a half months, I've been teaching at a junior high school and an elementary school in Shibukawa. Both are within biking distance of my house, but it takes a while, so having a car is definitely a plus. I spend every Wednesday at the elementary school, and the other four days at the junior high school. At both levels, the kids are great!

The junior high school is known as Kanashima junior high school, as it's in a little town in the greater Shibukawa area called Kanashima. Kanashima means "money island," I guess because the river forms an island in that area or something. Maybe they struck gold there. Anyway. Here's the website for Kanashima Junior High School, it's not much, but it's what they've got:

http://www.kanashima-j.ed.jp/

If you click on some of the links on that page, you might run across some photos of the sports teams in action, or see the lyrics to the school song - in Japanese, of course. ^_^

Kanashima is just about your typical small-town junior high school. It has about 220 students, divided into two classes of 30-40 students in each of 3 grade levels. That's few enough students to remember most faces, but far too many to remember most names. Especially since they're all Japanese names, which to me are just a collection of sounds. I've been trying my best, but it's really hard. The teaching itself is okay - I generally teach three or four classes a day on a normal week, but it seems like every week there's some special activity or something to alter the schedule (seriously, these kids have a LOT of activities, more on that later), so I end up teaching about 12 classes a week in the four days I'm at Kanashima. Pretty light schedule. Ideally, I see each class twice a week, plus the special education (ajisai) class twice a week, too. An uninterrupted week doesn't often happen, though. For the regular classes, the twice a week lessons consist of one regular class and one "main team teaching class." In the main team teaching classes, the Japanese English teacher tries to have me do activities and teach more than in the regular classes. I consider myself lucky in this, because it means I get to plan the occasional activity, where some assistant language teachers are essentially human tape recorders, just reading out what's in the text, so the students can hear a native say it. I think I've worked out a fairly good arrangement with the Japanese teacher I work with. In both classes, the class starts with a criss-cross game, which is basically a review of a concept that was done earlier in the term - I run that, and decide what material will be reviewed. It usually runs about ten minutes. Then, the teacher goes over the point of the day, with any handouts, and sometimes (usually on main team teaching days) I'll run a reinforcement activity. On main team teaching days, the students use name cards, on which I give participation stamps - I try to run activities so that roughly ten or fifteen students get stamps, sometimes based on participation, sometimes they have to be the best in the class. This arrangement works pretty well all in all, but it does mean that I have to be pretty creative a good deal of the time. Have you ever tried keeping the attention of 35 thirteen year olds at the same time, and keeping them focused and learning? It's not easy. And this is Japan, where the kids are disciplined and eager to learn. I can't imagine what it's like in America, or some of the less well-off nations out there. Teachers work HARD. I have a new respect for them.

The teachers in Japan work extremely hard - I swear, some of them live at school. There are about 20 teachers at this school all told, most of them in their thirties and forties. They're all fairly friendly if I go up and talk to them, but it's very few of them who'll come and talk to me. That's pretty much the situation with the students, too, and essentially the entire nation of Japan. Friendly if you make the first effort.

School lunch is awesome.

It's kind of getting late, so I'll call it a night. I'll include more, with some pictures if you're lucky, and some details about the teachers and students and some stuff about the elementary school next time, and I promise it won't be three weeks. See, this is why I was hesitant to blog - the backlog of stuff that's been happening is tremendous, and I still have only scratched the surface of school life. It's a daunting task. Oh, well - ganbarimasu! (I'll do my best!)

Thoughts

Hello again everyone! Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I was thinking about all you guys during Christmas, that was my first Christmas away from home, it really made me homesick. I miss you all! However, I've got some good friends here to be with, so it's not terrible by any means. ^_^
I had Christmas dinner with a friend and her family, and it was phenomenal. For the Japanese, Christmas eve is more important than Christmas day - I never had that explained to me so that I could really understand it, but all the big dinners happen on Christmas eve. On actual Christmas, the price of Christmas cakes and all drops sharply, because everyone's already eaten all the treats they want the night before. Slightly strange, but whatever. Here are some photos from the dinner party:

The general spread. Note the tree and flowers in the background - They gave me the flowers as a Christmas present, and they're almost as big as their tree. Ye gods. Anyway, the spread was great. Not what I was used to, but great. Roast chicken, Nabe (Japanese soup with a lot of stuff in it), french fries, and sushi. Hey, when in Rome.

The chicken - presentation is so important in Japan, they even made the chicken wear a bow. They even put lettuce, lemon, and strawberry borders around the platters of french fries. Yeesh.

The Christmas cake we ate. These things are maybe 6 inches in diameter, and they're pretty pricey (a decent one runs around 30 dollars), but they are made with the highest quality ingredients, and the strawberries on top alone probably cost 6 dollars. Strawberries are hard to produce this time of year, and the demand for perfect strawberries for Christmas cakes and whatnot drives the price way up. They made the setting look and taste great, though. The cake was delicious.

On actual Christmas day, I didn't really do much, it was kind of quiet. My folks had sent me a butt-kicking care package with some books, DVD's, newspaper clippings, and mixes for Jambalaya and Gumbo (a bit hard to come by in Japan), so I spent the day taking advantage of all of those. My folks and I tried to get a webcam system up and running, but it wasn't to be on that day - you know how those things are, when you're trying to install them. Well, imagine that, but with all the documentation in Japanese. I did eventually get it working, though - I'm on skype now with the webcam and everything - name is Jefferson Thomas Caffery - jeff.caffery@gmail.com. Video phones... The future is NOW, man!

Oh, by the way, one more MAD important thing that happened, a little before Christmas (although I kind of consider it a cosmic Christmas present, and among the best presents I've ever gotten, at that): I GOT A CAR!! um. For some reason, blogger is being uncooperative about uploading images right now, I'll try to post one a bit later. But anyway, having a car is KEY. I can now trek it to Maebashi and Takasaki pretty easily, and mount Haruna is within easy reach for camping in the Summertime, and you know, it makes grocery shopping and going to onsen and pretty much everything a whole heck of a lot easier. Good times, all in all. It's a Suzuki Alto, I'd never heard of the brand before (I've never heard of a LOT of the models of cars they have here in Japan), it's a small little K-car, but it does the job nicely. The steering wheel is on the right, which still kind of throws me.

I got a heck of a lot of vacation time over the holiday - something like 17 days. That's definitely one of the perks of being an ALT working for my company - we get the same holidays as the students. The rest of the teachers (the REAL teachers ^_^) don't get nearly as much vacation time. Being a teacher is a serious responsibility in Japan, and they are expected to come in a lot to prepare lesson plans for the next session, and grade exams from the last session, and plan and prepare and improve... but there's not a heck of a lot of that that I can do. Oh, darn.

Just something at random: over here, they have started selling a pita with three pieces of chicken and weird vegetables in it at McDonalds. They call it Pita Mac. PITA here standing for Pain In The Ass. This is a poorly-conceived creation, be glad it hasn't made it to the states, or if it has, avoid it. However, I can't complain about the fries, they are always, always perfect. Can't beat the customer service and attention to detail by the fast food guys around here. However, they can only work with what they're given, and you can't turn a Pita Mac into a silk purse.

Another post coming extremely soon. Like, in the next 2 hours.

Christmastime among the Japanese

Hey all! Once again, I realize it's been a while since I posted, but I'll skip the standard apology and go right into new stuff, because it's really interesting. Yesterday, we had a Christmas Enkai for all the Assistant Language Teachers in Gunma, and it was a blast!!

First, a little background on Christmas in Japan. This is definitely, noticeably, the Christmas season when you turn on the TV or are shopping in a commercial district, same as in America, but I guess the difference is, when you get into the residential areas, you can't really tell. The typical thing to do on Christmas if you're Japanese is to either stay at home with the family if you're married, or if you're young and single, it's a nice holiday to go out on a romantic date. If you're of the first persuasion, a really common thing is to get Kentucky Fried Chicken for Christmas dinner, for reasons no one has been able to clearly explain to me. Perhaps that was the chain that first made a really big deal of decorating restraunts for Christmas in Japan. It's a bit of a mystery. It looks to me like the Mos Burger (a big gourmet burger chain) has been trying to get in on some of that action, but I don't know how much success they're getting from the "Merry X-Mos" ad campaign. Anyway. The holiday is kind of seen as a romantic holiday for young people in love. Another big difference is that very few businesses and almost no people put up christmas lights and all. From what I've come to understand, an actual Christmas tree is fairly common, but illuminations, as Christmas lights have come to be called here, are pretty rare. Maybe it's that the lights are more expensive, maybe it's because it's a very energy-conscious nation, but the streets are definitely dark (although, admittedly, this is Gunma we're talking about - maybe more towards Tokyo, more people decorate). However, the spirit is still there, I'm doing Christmas-oriented lessons at my elementary school, and the kids are digging it. It's funny - I sometimes see racks of Christmas cards set up in stores, but Christmas card giving is not so much a Japanese thing - New Year's cards are MUCH more in demand. The cards in the racks, therefore, are largely written in English - they're targeting the gaijin market! Very interesting. ^_^

A big thing to do when the Christmas/New Year's holiday comes near is to have an Enkai with your co-workers (or just general friends). An enkai is a dinner party at a Japanese-style restraunt or ryokan (Japanese-style hotel). Sometimes they are just for an evening, but often they are overnight. At these parties, people often let go of all the inhibitions they usually have around the office, and cut loose and eat all the fancy food they want, and drink all the alcohol they want, and the mood is definitely informal and the idea is to improve cameraderie (spelling?) in the workplace. It definitely works, too. The enkai restraunts and fancy ryokans do big business this time of year, and many people have a wonderful time at them. Including us!!

The enkai that I attended Friday evening and Saturday morning was for all the assistant language teachers in the Gunma prefecture. It was advertised for a long time on the Gunma Jet website - www.gunmajet.net - they will probably be posting some photos and whatnot there soon. About 40 ALTs from all over the region attended, some came from pretty far away. It was really convenient for me and the people living in Shibukawa, because the enkai was held at a ryokan by a lake really near Mount Haruna (name literally means "Name of Spring), which is the closest mountain to Shibukawa. It was held at the Yuusuge ryokan, which was a really goregeous place with a nice onsen (ON-sen, Japanese style indoor/outdoor bath and/or hot spring) on premesis, and it was right on the lake. However, to get there, you had to drive up these really narrow, twisting roads in the dark. Now, driving on these roads even in ideal conditions is no picnic - they're pretty narrow, pretty steep, and have a lot of hairpin turns and double-backs. However, in winter, it gets really foggy, and we had trouble seeing five feet in front of the car. Scary times. We were lucky it hadn't snowed yet. We all got there and back safely, though, so enough caution was taken.

Dinner began at 8:30, and we had dinner with karaoke and nomihodai (all you can drink) for two hours. It was definitely interesting times. Here's some photos:


The spread, before everyone got in

The first to sit down, that's Diana smiling at the camera

Each place setting was the same, and each one was superb.

The group at my table. For those of you unfamiliar with ryokan etiquette, each ryokan has its own unique style of Yukata (relaxing robe). One of the first things you do when you get to your room is change into your yukata, and you stay in that all evening. We didn't just all randomly decide to wear the same thing.

The group starts to spread out a little, and the drink starts to flow more freely. That's Jonas, me, and CJ from left to right. CJ is a total ham when it comes to karaoke. Fun times. We started with Christmas carols, moved on to 70's classics (Get Down Tonight, Jungle Boogie, etc.) and from there, whatever fun.

A general idea of the scope of the party

The karaoke becomes more animated. CJ and, um, I think that's Christine are early casualties.

We also had a secred santa gift exchange - these were some of the gifts.

After we finished dinner and karaoke, everyone went to the onsen and relaxed for a bit. The party lasted far into the night, but onsen tends to relax me to the point of sleepiness, and I was an early casualty. I only lasted until about 1:00.

This is the view of Lake Haruna, taken from the window of our room.


A little floating dock on the lake




Chau, Rebecca (?) and me

The outside of the onsen

Well, that was pretty much our time. It was an absolute blast.

I did find out one very interesting thing on my way up Mount Haruna, on the roads with all those narrow, steep twists and turns. I used to watch an anime series called Initial D, which is a series about illegal street racing in the mountains of remote Japan, very cool, very well done. Much drifting is done around steep mountain turns, very suspenseful. I found out that the series is based on THE TOWN I LIVE IN!! It's based in Gunma. The mountain that the main character races on all the time is called Akina (literally, "Name of Autumn"), which is a deliberate misnomer of Haruna. The town the characters live in is called "S-city," and it's pretty obviously Shibukawa. The opposing racing club is called the Akagi Red Suns, and Akagi is a mountain that's, like, right over there, I see it every day. The main character works his day job at an Eneos gas station, and there's an Eneos RIGHT BY MY HOUSE. It could be the one! There was even Initial D merchandise for sale in the ryokan we stayed at. I call that pretty darn funny. However, after driving on that road, I have a new respect for how INSANE street racing is. Apparently, there are still many kids who go up on that mountain to drift, but the local government installed speed bumps and speed strips as a preventative measure. Interesting stuff. Here's some links about Initial D, if you want to know more.

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

http://www.crunchyroll.com/showseries?id=60

By the way, I'll be posting more about where I work and what I do, but I can't really send photos, since the principals might have issues with photos of the kids being seen on the internet, where anyone can look. Therefore, if you want to see pics of the places I work and the kids and events therein, please post a comment to the blog or send an e-mail to jeff.caffery@gmail.com, and I will verify who you are and send out a mass e-mail to everyone with many pics. Hopefully this will work.

It was awesome to hear from you, Charles, Aunt Suzy, Trent. Have a happy holidays! Charles, you still need to send me your address so I can send you some CC Lemon. My back is feeling much better, for those of you who were worried. Thanks for your concern. I've largely fininshed my Christmas shopping, and I'm going to get a car next weekend (finally), so hopefully things will get easier pretty soon, i.e. I will have more time to blog. We can but hope.

Ja, later everyone!!

Resolution of cliffhanger

Hello again. So, to stop you worrying about yesterday, there was good news and bad news. The good news (REALLY good) is that they didn't find anything wrong with my CT scan. The bad news is that they didn't find anything wrong with my CT scan that would make my back hurt like hell, and they could therefore fix. So, apparently the doctor thinks its just muscle inflammation and that I need to go to an onsen (hot spring) to relax my muscles for a bit. Hey, I can handle that. Therefore, that will be top priority this weekend. Thanks for your concern, I'll stop whining about it now. ^_^

Maybe.