Well it certainly has been a long time since I last wrote – time has certainly passed quite quickly. I was surprised to see that I have been here six months already! I have adjusted to my new life here and season brings new things with it. Time is measured by seasonal events as much as by calendars. The Sakura (cherry blossom) is carefully watched and monitored, and even though they won’t bloom for another few weeks, their progress from bud to bloom are carefully documented in the newspapers. The shops are filled with little plastic sakuras in anticipation A little while ago was the unofficial first day of spring, roughly translated from Japanese to mean ‘day the insects start crawling out of the earth.’ True to it’s summoning there was a massive flying beetle buzzing about my classroom. It seemed like bad karma to me to kill the herald of spring so I shut him into my managers’ office while she was out for lunch. I had a really nice Valentines Day, though I was surprised to find that in Japan, it’s the day women give gifts to men. Zac came home with a stash of about 12 boxes of Chocolates from his students, very expensive and very delicious. On the 14th of March was White Day, a day where men give gifts to women, my office had tins of sweets, little boxes of chocolates and little cakes all over the place.
While I have to say that I really do love teaching, one of the benefits of doing it in Japan is that you are constantly a recipient of gifts of gratitude and appreciation from your students. Last week alone I was given two massive persimmons, incredibly sweet and individually wrapped from Akio, a massive grapefruit the size of a baby’s head that I could smell from the bottom of my bag on the train home, and a bag of hot azuki (sweet red bean) flavoured Hanamiaki – my all time favorite Japanese treat - from the shop down the road. Sometimes you are given a gifts of great red apples piled into paper bags as a thank you – such as when a student passes a STEP or TOIC test, or even things that they think you will enjoy, like Sumo wrestling magazines from my student Teruo (I am in fact fascinated with Sumo – it’s like watching dinosaurs umber about in an elaborate ritual dance).
I have the benefit of teaching children from three all the way to 78 years old, and on top of English, I am now also teaching French (which I have to say is a lot more fun than teaching English). Each class is 40 minutes and because a new school year has just started and parents have been signing their kids up for extra English lessons. (On a side note, this means that all almost on a daily basis now I see young women graduating from high school on elaborate kimonos on the trains in the streets. It really stirs some magic into day to day life when you see the girls done up in formal Japanese wear. Most girls now can’t put on a kimono or Obi sash on by themselves, and must go to special shops to have it done. I don’t blame them!)
With all the new students sometimes I teach up to 10 classes a day which is tiring, but I really do like all my students. Sometimes on my busy days I kinda wish one of them wouldn’t show up, but once they do I am always pleased at how much I enjoy them, hearing about soandso’s sick cat, or whose son or daughter is still not married. Every week I discover something new, as Japanese people can be very private, this really is hard at times. For example, after feeling a little sorry for one of my older men students who is in his 70’s for not being married (which is very common for workaholics), I was surprised to find that he is married and has loads of kids! I have been teaching him for 5 months, you think he would have mentioned them once! That’s when I learned that many Japanese couples, especially if they are of an older generation, don’t wear wedding rings, or take them off after about twenty years. I asked my manager for more details about this but I got the standard *shrug* “it’s Japanese style.”
I have gotten used to the crush of the trains going to and from work, whipping past suburbs and rice paddies in the day, and the night train home where it’s so dark outside that you imagine that you are on a train barreling at top speed through space. Spring is finally coming, and I am enjoying a blustery March where the temperature will be 19 degrees one day, and tornado like wind and rains the next. But soon it will be cherry blossom season and you won’t be able to see the sky for all the pink blossoms in the trees. And that my friends, is when my Mumma is coming to visit me! She is going to start her great adventure across the Pacific to this island in about 8 days so there will be lots of new pictures on the site for you. Till then!
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