Man, it was cold on the way to work today. The wind has been blowing like crazy, and there was a light dusting of snow on the ground when I peeked outside this morning to decide whether to go jogging. I decided to skip the jog.
There’s not a lot of trees or other buildings besides Ito Yokado, so when I go to work I’m usually walking straight into the wind. This morning it was burning my face it was so cold. I got on the train and warmed up pretty quick, though.
Tuesday is my last busy day of the week. Most of my classes from Wednesday through Friday have been cancelled because the third year students don’t come to school anymore. I just have to get through Monday and Tuesday, and then it’s easy street.
My lesson today was for the second year students, talking about their recent school trip to Hokkaido. I have the same lesson twice with Mr. Yamamoto, and once with Mr. Kimura.
Mr. Kimura has a flair for the dramatic, and sometimes can get off topic. Apparently he does it in Japanese as well as English, but he can make it tough on his students who struggle to understand him.
My lesson today had the students listening to a conversation between Mr. Kimura and myself. I asked him some questions about the trip, like “What did you do in Hokkaido?”, and “Did you go skiing or snowboarding?”. The students are expected to write down his response on their answer sheet. We did the conversation three times, and each time Mr. Kimura would give a different response. Instead of a nice “Yes, I went skiing”, he would say “I enjoyed skiing and dogsledding and eating ramen very very much!”. Then the next time he would say “Dogsledding was fun, but I enjoyed skiing and not snowboarding!” He wasn’t really doing it on purpose, he just likes to talk. The students all had different answers and the lesson didn’t go so well.
Have I ever mentioned how much people in Japan are into brand names? Mr. Hayashi likes to show off the label from his jacket, flash his Rolex, and drop loads of money in Korea on brand name items for his children. It’s not just Mr. Hayashi, though, everyone seems to pay a lot of attention to brand names.
It’s an interesting thing to watch, because I’ve always cared very little about what I wear or who makes it, as long as it is comfortable I’m fine with it. Some students today noticed that I had the word “Columbia” on my jacket, and they were laughing because the name sounds funny. The good news about this brand name infatuation is that you can get great clothes without a brand name cheap in stores like UniQlo. People around here are just slaves to fashion, I guess.
Mr. Hayashi spent some time grinding on me today, telling me to move to San Francisco after JET and get a degree there. He’s not hinting really, just telling me to do it. Like you would tell a teenager to get a haircut. He also told me to start a family and that he knows lots of foreigners in Japan who are miserable.
It would be easy to let the things that Mr. Hayashi say get me down, but when you consider this is the same guy who enjoys discussing his erection problems in public, who considers marriage only a necessary step to having children so you can boast about their success, who compares his students unfavorably to dogs… well, it’s easy to take it all with a grain of salt.
Sometimes it’s nice to get some advice on living in Japan, but in the end I take all his suggestions, commands, and advice and file them away in my short term memory. I think I’ll find my own key to happiness, and go from there.
Tonight’s key to happiness was a big bowl of homemade yakisoba in my (comparatively) warm apartment. I’m getting ready to go in and do some studying – I’ve got a kids book that Tsuji-san loaned me all about pee. Can’t wait.
