Back After a Looooooong Bout of...Not Being Back ^^;
Wow...was my last post really the one about the live food? ...'Cause that was forever ago. I'd like to say that I've written something more than that in the last few months and that it all just got eaten up by cyber space but...well, ya'll know better. You can pretend you don't if ya like. It'll make me look better, even if it won't actually convince anybody. ^^
I do have excuses, but who wants to hear those, right? ;)
Good news is, after a mucho busy summer, I'm back with much to tell about. Better news is, I just got hit by the bloggy bug, which means I've conquered my looming procrastination cycle (void? abyss? terminal disease?) for the evening and feel the urge to sit down and tell everyone [who hasn't entirely given up on me] what I've been up to.
So here goes:
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Major event 1: The Trip Home
We'll start as far back into the summer as I can remember...hm...that's not too far. lol Seems like everything leading up to summer break was ultimately swallowed by my trip home at the end of July. Big trips do that, ya see. Especially when you're living overseas and a trip home is more than a 3-day-weekend, couple-hundred-bucks-out-of-your-pocket deal. Even more especially when you're living way the hell up in the middle of no where (a category under which Sotogahama shall indefinitely qualify...at least until Star Trek comes true ;)
Ooo, so here's a digression (is it bad to digress when you haven't even gotten to what you're talking about yet? ...yea I'm gonna be a GREAT writer). As I'm writing that last paragraph, it occurs to me that I seem to have this tendency to drop myself into a lot of middle-of-nowheres for my various exploits. Take Amazing Exotics, for example. Ya don't get much more in the middle of no where than that. (For those of you who don't know, AE was the name of the place I worked training lions and tigers and bears for a summer back in high school.) Umatilla, FL, that was. 8 weeks of blistering heat and rain at 4pm every day without fail...assuming 4pm was when we'd all head out to feed. Seriously, I remember a day or two when we tried to beat the rain or wait it out...yea, it waited for us. Came down full blast the minute we took up our buckets and headed out to the cages. ...Damn, that was a good summer. I think the secret of life is something like finding something you love so much that you love it even when you hate it. (such has yet to be said of my job as an English teacher, I must say, though I can say it about living in Japan, at least)
Anyway, let's get back on track, shall we?
So I cut a good 2 weeks out of my summer...rather at the last minute, now that I think back to it. I think I knew I'd be going home at some point, but I bought the ticket itself rather late. Probably just because I'm lazy, but who knows for sure? ;) But I did get the ticket, set for July 29-August 10, and started making my hotel reservation for a night in Tokyo, collecting souvenirs to bring to choice people Stateside, etc. Then I was in school one day and my new JTE (FOR WHOM MEL WILL TOTALLY MAKE A SEPARATE SECTION, WON'T YOU MEL???--*ahem*) asked me if I'd be going home this summer. The conversation went something like this:
Suzuki-sensei: "Will you be going back to America this summer?"
Me: "Yea, I bought my ticket [2 days ago]. I'll be gone from July 29th-August 10."
Suzuki-sensei: *thoughtful pause* "Ah, so you will miss Nebuta!"
Me: O_o *deep breath* "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!"
The Nebuta festival, my fine readers, is one of the 2 things Aomori Prefecture is famous for. Seriously. I'm not exaggerating. 2 things. That's it. The Nebuta festival is one of them. The other is apples. Clearly, after a year, I've tried the apples (I had one tonight for dinner, and let's just say they've earned their place on the list! :) Last year my JET group arrived something like the day AFTER Nebuta ended, so naturally, we all threw our fists in the air and swore we'd go next year (that is, this year). And here I went and bought my ticket without the thought of Nebuta even CROSSING my mind.
Now, it's only fair to let you all know exactly why I was so upset. Here's the reason: Nebuta is super cool. "Well, duh!" you say. "Mel would never gush about something that wasn't super cool!" Of course she wouldn't. So here's a bit of explanation:
The festival consists of something like 30 large paper floats molded with wire into traditional Japanese demons and Bodhisattva (sp?--they're Buddhist saints), tigers, dragons, landscapes, etc, all painted with bright colors and lit up from the inside (this being a night festival and all). They clear off this long, wide street in the middle of Aomori city and the floats go by with big crowds of dancing Japanese people all dressed up in yukata (summer kimonos) and enormous racks of paper lanterns and crazy fun all over the place. It's...kind of hard to explain exactly how cool the floats are. So here are some pictures I snagged off-line:
That should do it. See the coolness? And here I went and planned a trip back to Florida when I could've been getting crushed in a sea of drunken tourists and Aomori-ites watching the festival of giant float-age! Man!
*throws fist in the air* NEXT YEAR! >:O
But moving on to the trip home itself, it worked out pretty well. The first week I got hit pretty hard with jet lag, however, and didn't really get to do much. I spent most of my time listening the LAST HARRY POTTER [audio]BOOK for the first couple days (when I wasn't sleeping), then graduated to letting Erin drag me out of the house to go see the 5th HP movie (which was QUITE awesome, btw), and ultimately crowned my visit with a nightly game of Parcheesi....not a single game of which I won, I don't think. Maybe the first one, on account of no one in the house either knew or remembered how to play when I pulled the dusty old box out of the garage...actually, it wasn't old, unless you're counting how long it'd been sitting in the garage. It was new for the fact that I distinctly remember breaking open the little plastic baggy of pawns and dice after first bringing it out of the garage. Also, it was under a stack of other board games, so it wasn't even dusty. So I rephrase: I might've won the first game on account of no one in the house either knew or remembered how to play when I pulled the neglected and forgotten box out of the garage. There.
Clearly, I'm digressing again.
So the trip home was fun. I buried myself in movie-going since I love movies and I never get to go here. Also, movies are expensive in Japan (we're talkin' like, $20 a ticket unless you're a female going on Ladies Day, in which case it drops down to $10). We saw Harry Potter twice, the Simpsons Movie, Stardust (better than the box office earnings will show, I fear), and...uh...ah, yes. Transformers (which was far better than I was expecting, I must admit). Apart from movies, I was lucky enough to be in town when other people were, so I visited friends and family and did all that good stuff. Also hit up all my favorite restaurants and probably gained back all the weight I'd lost since being here, but I'll say it was worth it. ^^
One of the major activities for this trip was actually planning another one. Since most people know about it already, I'll go ahead and drop it in here as news, which will then give me an excellent vehicle to one of my excuses for why I've been so absent these last few months:
Erin and I are going to Surrey, British Colombia in October to attend a writers' conference. :) We're talkin' special guests (including, but not limited to Anne Perry and Jack Whyte), workshops on all manner of things from poetry to publishing, interviews with agents, the works. It sounds quite fun. Maybe it'll even give Erin some direction for what she wants to study in college. (There, I said it lol)
There's the vehicle.
Here's the destination:
I've been writing. A lot. Obviously not on the blog, but I've been working really hard on a novel these last few months, and it's all going down by hand. At some point, I discovered that THAT is my way to avoid my overbearing tendency to procrastinate: write it out by hand. In pen. Using white-out only when the scratch-outs have blackened the page so thoroughly that I can't read the words squeezed between the X's and ==='s with a magnifying glass. That's my secret, and somehow the ideas really do flow out that way in a big, gushing, fingertip-blackening river of inky goodness. ;) Maybe I type too fast for my own good, or seeing the delete key so ready and available is too tempting to pass up. I dunno. But it's working. My goal was to get the first draft done by the conference. Am I gonna make it? Um...probably almost. But that's something. I haven't really finished anything I've written since I slapped a quick-finish ending on my first novel back in high school, and that was just a sloppy mess.
But yea. That's what I've been doing. Now isn't that a great excuse? Even though I'm clearly not going to say anything about what I'm writing about? >;)
So wrapping up the tale of going-home.
It was the night before I was supposed to leave, August 9th, to be exact, and I was trudging through the house feeling perfectly like I did NOT want to get on the plane the next day. The Wii was active and alert in the family room, and virtual tennis balls were flying, and I sat down at the counter and said, "Seriously, I just wish that I could stay another week."
Long story short, that's what I ended up doing. Long story tall, the switch required me to call up my boss (ON AN OVERSEAS CALL IN JAPANESE, PEOPLE) that I'd been sick and didn't want to come home yet (which wasn't...enTIREly a lie ;). I deserved to stay just for getting through the call in one piece, if you ask me. Talking on the phone in a foreign language is FREAKING HARD. But back to the long story shot, my 2 week vacation turned into a 3 week one, and that's why I probably won't make it home for Christmas. ^_^;
It's also why I've had a VERY busy time since getting back, what with the English speech contest and all...
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Major Event 2.1: The English Speech Contest
We had this last year, too, but I was hit with it right when I got here, and anything that happened in that first month of August is rather like the memory of a tornado sucking out my brain. I remember the JTEs (those are my co-teachers, the Japanese Teachers of English, btw) introducing me to these kids and throwing me into rooms with them after school to practice, telling me to show them how to do gestures, etc., but really no one who comes in that first year knows anything about what they're doing. I'm lucky enough to have 6 students in the contest (2 from each school), so I did walk away with winners last year, but I can hardly take credit for that. For one thing, I came in REALLY close to the speech contest date, and they'd all been practicing for months ahead of time. For another, I...just had no idea what I was doing. ^_^;
The speech contest has 2 categories: creation and recitation...which are pretty self-explanatory, but in case there's any doubt out there, Creation = making your own speech, Recitation = choosing a passage from an English text book and reciting it. Both categories require full memorization of the speech.
For the record, my three speech contest schools are: Tairadate, Kanita, and Minmaya.
Last year, the results were (note: I'm writing this out for my own benefit as much as you guys'):
Recitation:
1st place: Minmaya (with whom I had practiced several times)
2nd place: Kanita (with whom I had met ONCE)
3rd place: Imabetsu (the school of a JET north of me with whom I feel an irrational sense of rivalry...probably because of this speech contest)
Creation:
1st place: Imabetsu (grrrr...)
2nd place: Kanita (again, only met this girl once, too)
3rd place: Minmaya (practiced with this kid a couple times)
Judging for the contest is based mainly on pronunciation and expression.
Then there's the issue of gestures, and I've gotta explain this before going on. Americans gesture. Our hands fly all over the place when we talk. Even English speaking people who don't think they gesture that much? Yea, they do. It's part of our language and part of our culture (when I say "our" I mean "we English speakers," because for some reason this is a linguistic cultural element more than a geographical or national one...if that makes sense). When Japanese people speak...Japanese is just not a language designed to have an accompanying bodily function. Japanese people don't gesture when they speak. They might bow if they're apologizing or laugh if they're telling a funny story, but that's about it. And therefore, teaching kids to do gestures that accompany their English speeches so they don't look flat and boring behind the podium is like teaching them not 1, but 2 languages at once. Remember that. It's gonna come up. Gestures are a big part of this story (which I've really gotta wrap up soon...it's 10 already :-/ ).
So this year, the time for the speech contest rolled around again, and I was really looking forward to it. The speech contest is one of those things that takes me out of the more mundane part of my job of standing in front of a class reciting words or passages. When it's speech contest time, I get to meet with kids during other classes, get to know them, teach them to be bold and confident (and a little goofy), and all around spend less time sitting at my desk looking white and foreign. In the case of Kanita, I even got to help pick the 2 kids that entered. We had a recitation test where the kids had to do a mini skit (a "Hello. Can you tell me how to get to the station?" kind of deal) in front of me, and I graded them on various points, such as pronunciation, expression, loudness, flow, etc. I really enjoy doing this sort of thing...maybe because it's a kind of freedom I wouldn't have gotten last year with he-sensei and his jerkwadness. This year, the teachers are a lot better...
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Major Event 2.2 (aka Digression): New JTEs
The teachers changed back in April (wow, I haven't posted since April?), and ALL of my JTEs (not counting the one in Minmaya, who I only see for speech contest practice) changed. Tairadate's cool Tsuruya-sensei (you all might remember him as my neighbor who does EVERYTHING) took off for some school in Aomori (though he's still my neighbor until his oldest son graduates elementary school next April). I was worried about this, because Tsuruya-sensei and I got along quite well and he gave me a lot of freedom in the classes to talk about culture and stuff on a whim whenever the class led to it. But in his place came Suzuki-sensei, who is NOTHING like that...but I actually might like him more than his predecessor. He's one of those people who takes his class very seriously as a CLASS (no funny business), but you look at him and know that he's a really good teacher. He's very interested in teaching materials and learning new teaching methods, trying out new games and using different materials for teaching the kids. We get along really well, and he's SUPER good at English (except he likes to say "Ok, let's try with all together" for some reason...probably just a bad habit). So no worries there.
As for Kanita, most of you will remember last year's hell of he-sensei and she-sensei, who drove me crazy enough to really HATE that school (and the town as a whole) for the entire year I had to go there. Well, she-sensei up and got married and moved to Sendai, so she was in for a replacement. As for he-sensei (do you hear the angels sing?), he reached the limit of years a teacher can stay at any one school, and the prefecture went and moved him to a school in Aomori city.
Now here's an interesting twist. Tsuruya-sensei from Tairadate and he-sensei from Kanita got moved to the same school in Aomori City.
He-sensei's replacement turned out to be one of he-sensei's old high school basketball teammates.
The other teacher who came to Kanita to replace she-sensei worked in Kanita several years ago when the last JET was there.
And iiiiiiit's a small world aaaaaafter aaaaaaaall.
But good news. Both new Kanita teachers are awesome. The new he-sensei is young and smiley and very nice (I've never seen him yell at a student), with his only quirk being that he speaks English with a Russian accent (even though the only other foreign language he speaks is Chinese). The new she-sensei is more serious, but very good at English, very nice to the students, and is really helpful whenever I have a question about anything at all, school-related or no. You'll probably remember that the last she-sensei of Kanita had rather shitty English (not sure if I put it that bluntly before, but it's true anyway), so I couldn't carry on much of a conversation with her. Well, let me just say that it makes a WORLD of difference to be able to work with a female JTE who speaks good English. I didn't even think much about working with men vs women until she came along, and I'm finding it's a really different experience (not unconditionally better because she's a woman, but I am really enjoying it).
Ok. Back to our regularly scheduled program.
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Major Event 2.1 Continued: The English Speech Contest
So the 2 speech contest students for Kanita were decided, and I was put almost exclusively in charge of their training...and I have to say, they did EXTREMELY well. For the first time, really, since becoming a teacher, I got to feel really proud of some of my students specifically. The recitation girl chose an old (very short) Japanese horror story about a mujina (which is a creature that looks like a human, but has no face), and she did wonderfully. By the time the contest rolled around, she had fixed a major l vs. r pronunciation problem, had worked out different voices for the 2 speaking characters and the narrator of the story, had some great gestures down, and was using more expression (appropriate expression for a scary story) than I would have ever thought possible, coming from a Japanese girl. The creation girl...omg, I just can't say enough good things about her. Example:
We're practicing her speech. She'd say "histoly." I'd tell her, "It's 'histoRy." She'd smile and nod and go, "Oh, ok. History." Just like that, she'd have it down.
It's hard to say how amazing that is, to have a student who can go from an "l" to an "r" or a "b" to a "v" just like that. After a year's worth of experience about battling the evils of mispronunciation, this girl was just a blessing. She even smiled (actually SMILED, not just cracked her lips open) when I told her to smile. Her speech was all about preserving Kanita and the traditions of her hometown. It was long and complicated, and she was brilliant. I practiced with those 2 for about 2 1/2 months before the contest.
In Tairadate, things were a little tougher. The two girls were chosen before the teachers even changed, but they didn't get to work on their speeches until about a months beforehand, and they didn't have them memorized until something like 4 days before. The recitation girl did The Giving Tree (which...most of you should know), and the creation girl did a speech about her work experience over the summer.
(And btw, yes, all the speech students I got to work with this year were girls.)
Both of the Tairadate girls were good enough at English on the written page, and decent at pronunciation, but it was a real uphill battle getting them to project their voices, to smile (I don't think they ever did get the smiling thing down) and to gesture without looking like robots. It didn't help things that the Principal came up to me one day and pretty much said he expected me to place this year...not in a mean way...the guy's always been sweet enough to me, but I've heard from the other teachers that he pitches fits when he doesn't get what he wants. So he came up and started a conversation, mentioning casually that Tairadate didn't place last year, and that he wanted it to this year. (I know--as if I thought he DIDN'T want us to place, right?) So I nodded and told him we'd do our best, while the Vice Principal (with whom I had just finished a discussion about how I was worried our girls wouldn't be ready in time) sat at his desk and grimaced on what I like to think was my behalf. Might've been 'cause it was so hot that day. ;)
As for Minmaya...I think that's where my extra week in FL rather hurt my job. I only got to meet with them twice. Luckily, both girls were pretty good, but they needed more work on pronunciation, more guidance on the gestures, (more help understanding what their speeches were actually ABOUT) etc. They could've done much better if I'd had more time with them, but...what can ya do?
So then came the speech contest. It was actually just last Wednesday (wow, a week ago, now...feels like forever). The contest itself is held all over Japan, first by county, then by prefecture, then the final All-Japan round in Tokyo. So at the county round I believe there were about 8 or 9 schools participating. 4 JETs showed up, including my Imabetsu rival and my friend from Yomogita, the town just to the south of me. There was also a new ALT who sat on the end of the 3 of us not really knowing what he was looking at, just like I sat last year. ;) It's nice to meet up with the other ALTs once in a while to jabber out English as fast as you can and talk about what's up...the kind of thing that helps a careless someone out in the middle of nowhere keep her sanity.
Recitation was first, and my Kanita girl with the ghost story was second in that category. She did beautifully. Her voice carried all across the gym, and I had to fold my hands in my lap and keep reminding myself not to gesture and mouth along with her like one of the over-involved PTA moms at a school play. A few kids later came the Tairadate girl, who by this point (thankfully) had her story memorized, though she forgot a bit at the end and paused for about a full 5 seconds (which doesn't sound like much, but sticks out like a sore thumb when you do it in front of 3 judges) before finding your place and continuing on.
Ah, and the judges. 2 Japanese men and one brand new JET from Aomori City. Just had to drop that in there.
For creation, Tairadate did well, finally managing to smooth down her gestures into something more natural than Will Robinson's robot. When my Kanita girl got up and did her speech, I think it was one of the proudest moments of my life. She did her speech flawlessly, with natural gestures, perfect pronunciation, and expression fitting the speech and style of what she was saying. And she was second to the end, so I only had one speech to sit through before I ran over and gave her a hug as I jumped up and down and told her how awesome she was (and yes, I spread the love to the other 5, too).
It was after I finished my congratulations that the Imabetsu JET called me outside and said she wanted to talk to me about something. I gotta say, it's been a while since I had that "being called into the Principal's office" kinda feeling, and I didn't much like it being thrust upon me at 23 years old by a fellow JET. But here she took me outside and told me my gestures were too big and flashy.
What do you say to that? The most I could manage was a smile and nod and quiet word that I thought they'd done well and we'd just have to see what the judges had to say. I must confess, I was a bit worried that to say more would be to blow the thing up into an argument, and I don't know this girl well enough to argue with her. But most of you know how competitive I am. It was no easy thing to stand there on the railing and listen to her go on about how I'd mis-trained my kids, "especially the Kanita one for creation."
And here's the worst part.
Results:
Recitation:
1st Place: Imabetsu
2nd Place: Tairadate
3rd Place: Kanita
Creation:
1st Place: Imabetsu
2nd Place: Tairadate
3rd Place: Yomogita
That's right. My Kanita Creation girl, my pride and joy, didn't even freakin' place! I couldn't believe it. I just sat staring in my chair for about a minute before giving a stiff nod to the Imabetsu JET and then going to tell my Kanita kid that the judges were clearly out of their minds.
Now, to be fair, Imabetsu was quite good. They were real competition for all of my kids, but I would say they were about equal with Kanita, and one up on Tairadate. I didn't think they deserved first in Recitation, but they did Fly Away Home, which is a piece that a ton of kids do every year because it's easy to place with. (It's also one of 2 pieces I told my JTEs I did NOT want our kids to do.) Kanita deserved first or second in Creation, and I'm saying that as someone who heard the speeches as a native English teacher, not as a coach of 3 of the participating schools. I'm not sure why the results came out that way, but on the upside, my Tairadate Principal (who was attending) ran up to me after the announcements and shook my hand for about 5 straight minutes, positively beaming, and thanked me profusely for helping us win second. Even still (and I really do feel bad about saying this, even though I can't shake it), I walked away from the day feeling really disappointed.
Better luck next year, I suppose.
What I am really happy about, upon reflection, is that both of the Kanita girls got the best experience they could have out of this, and knowing that makes me feel like a good teacher. Even though they didn't win, I feel like they 1) didn't sell out by doing the "easy-win" sort of speeches, 2) worked really hard to UNDERSTAND the pieces they were doing, and 3) really learned about pronunciation, expression, and gesture. And damn it all, but I'm proud of their gestures, too, whatever any ALT might say. At the end of the day, however much the schools might want to win, I think this sort of thing should be more for the experience than anything else. The kids should have fun. Prizes and placing should come second to that. And at least for some of my kids, I think it did.
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Wrap-up
Ok, I only got through 2 main events, but it's 10:30 now, and I gotta get ready for bed. In case I don't get in another update for a while, though (which is a very real concern, as we all know by now), I'll just drop this in:
5 Other Things That Have Happened To Me Since I Last Blogged:
1) I bought an air conditioning for my room to battle the summer that threatens my sleep. (It comes with a heating option, too, to help me battle the cold in a few months ;). One of my very favorite purchases EVER.
2) I have encountered a new species of insect somewhat resembling a space alien shrimp--and lived to tell the tale. Any of you ever seen a house centipede? http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/iiin/files/images/website.preview.jpg There's a pic of one. Proceed with caution. It is...quite disturbing. And large. I've seen 'um up to about 3/4 the length of my finger. ...But that's a tale for my next post.
3) I survived a typhoon...sort of. There was a typhoon that passed through last Friday night, but I swear didn't hear it rain for more than an hour, tops. But I saw the footage of it sweeping Tokyo on TV during the day, and they closed up the school early, and everyone was running around up here all freakin' out about it. Later, I was asked what I did/where I went for the typhoon. My reply: "Uh...I was home. Ya know...chillin' (for the whole 60 minutes it was here."
My inner mind theater while I was telling people this, which would surely have come out if anyone would've gotten the joke: I am Floridian! Raised in the land of the Ivans and the Georgeses! I hail from the flatlands of mighty Pinellas County on the much-feared Tampa Bay! We, who beat our hurricane shutters with water jugs and mega battery-powered flashlights at the Gulf of Mexico, pushed the evil Katrina from our lands and into the North! We LAUGH at your puny typhoons that make your Nebuta floats tremble and your apples drop from their stunted trees like the cowardly fruits they be!
4) I went o NIPPON2007 in Yokohama, the first World Sci Fi/Fantasy Convention to be held in Japan! :D It was so awesome. I met Michael Whelan. (For those of you who, I'm sure, "recognize the name but can't quite place it," he's the artist who did the covers of all of Anne McCaffrey's books with the dragons...and a TON of other sci fi/fantasy novel covers in such a way that he pretty much revolutionized the way these books were portrayed)
5) I walked 5.5 km with my Tairadate elementary school kids for a fund-raising event and, by fault of the rolled bandanna I was wearing, acquired a ruler-width void of white slanting across my forehead through the inevitable lobster-red sunburn. Yes. It's still there. And yes. It's quite difficult to take me seriously this way.
So. That's all for now, I think. I gotta get off to bed. Almost 11 now. enjoy the update everyone! If you read this and find a lot of typos, it's because I can't be bothered to go back and edit right now. I'll send out the blog update e-mail tonight so anyone who's been waiting can go ahead and read, but just know that I usually do read these things over at least once before I post them, and thus I apologize for any strikingly misspelled words, glaring homonyms, un-capitalized I's, missing letters, etc. that people pick up before I have a chance to go back and correct.
G'night!
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Blog Book Rec: The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden, by Catherynne M. Valente - for anyone who's finished Harry Potter and needs a really well-written, inter-twining fantasy book to read that combines various mythologies and intriguing plot twists. I picked this up at the con and just finished it yesterday. AWESOME.