We’ve got the big heaters installed in the staffroom at school now. That means that it’s nice and warm when I get there in the morning. The down side is that in the afternoon when things warm up outside, they’re still cranking the heat up in the staffroom. It’s not uncomfortably hot, just warm enough to make you sleepy. Combine that with lots of studying for an exam, and you have one tired foreigner.

The good news is that I didn’t fall asleep and I kept studying. I went home early, about 4:30, and then did some studying at home as well. I’m starting to approach the burnout level, so I’ll need to be careful and to take a nice long break after the exam.

I cooked a big dinner of rice, beef, and red peppers, and was sitting around digesting it when the phone rang. It was one of the guys heading to the yakitori, and he invited me along. I decided it was a good chance for a study break, so I went over and hung out for a little while.

He ordered up some raw octopus and wasabi over raw potatoes (takosabi), and I changed my drink to shou-chu on the rocks. I listened carefully to the Japanese being spoken and was able to catch a little more than what I’m used to. Still not enough to get by – I’ve got a long way to go.

Everybody wished me luck on my exam, and the guy who invited me picked up my tab. It just goes to show you that when you’re sitting at home with a stomach full of food getting ready to hit the sack, that in no way precludes the chance to eat raw octopus and drink strange liquors surrounded by people speaking a strange language. Another huge reason why I love living here.

I moved the link to my archives from the right hand side of your screen to just below the big picture on your left. I don’t know why you’d want to read any of my posts twice, but there you go.

I had three easy classes in the morning, and now I’m just coasting into the weekend. I had the whole afternoon off to study, and tomorrow I have just a few easy classes to do. Next week after my exam, the students will have exams, so I’ll have lots of free time to relax. I’m not really stressed out about my Japanese exam, but maybe I should be. The practice exams that I’ve been doing lately always seem to point to some little point that I didn’t quite understand. Also, it’s a timed exam, so I may be racing against the clock.

I got an interesting phone call from Hasegawa Sensei, the head of the Hyogo Board of Education. He was inquiring if I’d be available for another top secret project in December, and I said that I would be. He asked me to keep it to myself, but I’m sure all the teachers were wondering who was calling me. I’m definitely on the short list of hired help for the Board of Education. How can I turn that into a job prospect down the road… hmm…

In one of my classes today Mr. Hayashi had set the students to work on autopilot and prepare for their exam next week. He and I were talking about various things in English, and Mr. Hayashi was offering his opinions on how to attract women. He told me that personality doesn’t work – you need something more, like money. I couldn’t help but laugh and I asked him if that was his experience talking. He’s definitely from the camp that says that the more money you have, the better women you will attract. I offered the opinion that women that are with you for money will leave you easily for someone with more money, but he didn’t seem convinced. I have a lot of strong feelings on this particular subject but I didn’t push them on him.

I heard from the master of the yakitori this evening. We’ve been trying to organize a time when he and some of the gang can come over to my place for a fiesta. We’re aiming for the middle of December, but since the master works every night but Tuesday, it limits our options. I hope it works out – it would be fun to have a bunch of crazy people over to drink. What should I feed ’em?

I’m resisting the temptation to go out tomorrow night – instead I think I’ll stay in and study. There’ll be plenty of time for fun after the big test. I’m off to bed a little early tonight. Tomorrow should be a piece of cake!

More interview tests today. I baffled the students with such questions as “How are you?”, and “Do you enjoy studying English?”. To be fair, they are all so nervous that it’s tough for them to catch the question. Still, most of them did great and it went very well. Tomorrow is my last set of interviews, and then I’ll be coasting into exam week, when I will have a ton of free time.

Some of my students received the results from their STEP tests and they passed! It is really a good feeling to hear from them after you’ve been coaching them for so long.

My students can be pretty far out there – and then some of them are completely normal. You just never know for sure until you talk to them. I was explaining to one of my students that his favorite band – “Rip Slyme” was named after tearing snot. He was astonished, and a little disappointed I think. Another student today asked me how long my nose is (in centimeters). One of my ESS students gave me some omiyage from her trip to USJ a couple of weeks ago. She also wrote a nice note in English explaining the present. She’s one of my favorite students – she always tries hard.

I’m becoming more and more at home in a classroom full of students running around. In the few minutes before class officially begins it can be a bit chaotic in the classroom. Today some boys were playing a quick game of baseball – they kicked their slippers off their feet to pitch, and the boy would swing with his arm at the flying slipper to try to get a hit. Girls are screaming and chasing each other around, and the whole scene is how you imagine a food fight would be without the food. I just step out of the way of the flying slippers, or talk with some students in English.

There’s some serious behind the scenes drama going on between the English teachers right now. It’s a long story, and it goes back all the way to World War II, believe it or not.

At the end of the war, American occupying forces initiated a change (one of many) in the Japanese education system from the learning of German to the learning of English. Traditional English instruction in Japan consists of a lecture and lots of grammar rules – not conversation. For many years, up until the mid 1980’s, people just didn’t learn how to have a conversation in English. This led to lots of teachers knowing a whole lot about English, except how to speak it.

Now in present day Japan, there has been a movement over the last 15 years to teach conversation. This has put a lot of teachers on uncomfortable footing. Some teachers are afraid to get up in front of a class and speak English, because of the fear of making mistakes. They don’t mind doing it alone, but in front of other teachers, or an ALT like me, they don’t want to appear clueless.

Mr. Hayashi is great at speaking English, and he’s part of a minority of teachers that can not only teach it but speak it, as well. He makes other teachers nervous. At some schools, none of the teachers want to speak English, and so I’ve heard of situations where ALT’s have to learn Japanese to communicate with others. There is a seniority structure in these situations, and people get used to being the top dog in their pool of teachers. The wild card here is that every year, random teachers are transferred to other schools.

Ms. Mori is one teacher that was the boss at her previous school, and is used to having her way. Last year she transferred to our school and is very vocal about how English should be taught. She’s not very confident about speaking English, and she’ll only talk to me under strictly controlled conditions or if we’re alone.

She and Mr. Hayashi are clashing in a very Japanese way – subtly making power plays and allegations – recruiting friends and identifying enemies. Mr. Hayashi gives me the play-by-play daily, and sometimes tries to bait me into participating. So far I’m not having any of it, but it’s interesting to watch.

I don’t know how it will turn out, but a battle is brewing, and sooner or later somebody will come out on top. Very dramatic, and just one of the subplots going on in my workplace.

The last few days the history teacher has started to arrive at the same station at the same time so he can walk to school with me. Now we can squeeze in an extra 10-15 minutes of quality time in a day. Yaay! He’s like my English language stalker now.

My classes today were filled with the second half of the presentations that we started a couple of weeks ago. They weren’t quiet as lively (or as violent) as the previous set, but they all did a great job. I need to dream up a project for them to work on during the next term. Any ideas?

I had the chance to spend a couple of hours at school studying, and I worked through a couple of practice exams. I did pretty well – 85% on one, 75% on the other. On Sunday I will have the real thing, so I’m hoping I’m ready for it.

Have I told you how respect seems to work in Japan? Of course, this is just my experience and what I’ve gathered from talking to people both foreign and Japanese in my daily life, but the idea of respect is much different than what I’m familiar with in Western culture.

The way I see it, I’ll give somebody respect when they earn it in my eyes. When I’ve seen something they’ve done or seen evidence of it, I’ll respect them more. In Japan it’s a little different.

As in the west, if you do something well, and you do it with humility, you earn respect from other people. In addition, you can get respect just by being older than someone. Curiously, these two types of respect are weighted nearly the same.

Age is regarded as wisdom in Japanese culture, and the language is designed to be used differently depending on the status of who you are talking to. Status is closely tied to age. The corporate ladder is very closely associated with age. People in Japan have historically worked for the same company their entire lives, although from what I gather this is changing somewhat. As you progress through the years your salary increases based on your years of service rather than on merit.

Being older is useful in that people will treat you with kindness and deference, regard your opinions higher, and generally put you in a positive light. If you are senior to someone else, you will get respect from that person. Even if you are jerk.

An observation I’ve made is that some people take advantage of this “get respect free card” and use it to their advantage. They enjoy the priviledge of respect, without feeling that they have to earn it. This can lead to some uncomfortable situations, but I’m sure that the Japanese have ways of dealing with this that I’m not yet aware of.

Age and status play an important role in everyday communication. For example, when I say good morning to someone at my level or above, I say “Ohayo gozaimasu!”. When it is someone below you in status – say, a student – you can say just “Ohayo!”. It’s much more casual. A student knows they are below your level, so they don’t consider demeaning or wrong. If you say that to someone above your level, you are being rude.

There is a P.E. teacher that comes in every day and says “Ohayo gozaimasu” to everyone, but when he gets to me he says “Ohayo”. Somehow, I’m lower in status in his eyes, and it’s just something I have to live with. Even my teacher on Monday evenings, Tsuji-san, is very aware of status and respect. She checked my age and when she found out I was a bit older, then she knew that I could use a more casual tone with her.

Anyway, lately I’ve been studying the different layers of language to deal with people on the levels above you and below you. The vocabulary of Japanese changes significantly when you are using “respectful language”, and it makes things very difficult to figure out – especially on the fly. Luckily I’m a foreigner and when I make a mistake I have a good excuse.

I had a goofy combination of interview test classes, and one strange one with Mr. Hayashi.

The interview tests went just fine. At the end we played a game where I call at a word, and then two students at the front of the board try to be the first to circle the correct one from four choices. At first I had boys versus girls, but the girls were always too shy and wouldn’t try too hard. Now I play it with mixed teams, and so the boys play against each other and so do the girls. They really get into it, sometimes pushing the other kid out of the way to draw a circle.

Sometimes I wonder when an activity goes too far. Will the teacher tell me to stop it? A couple of weeks ago a kid got punched in the back during a skit (on purpose, but still…) and today was pretty rough. We’ll just have to see how far it will go.

Mr. Hayashi’s class was weird – the students were full of energy, and they asked lots of questions. Mr. Hayashi had the great idea to give them the answers to all the questions beforehand. Then they were encouraged as they got everything right. Call it an “alternative teaching method”.

One of the fill in the blanks was “I want to ( ) your sister.” I was waiting for the crude jokes to start, but not one was mentioned – it turns out that I was the only one thinking rude things. Figures. Turns out the correct answer was “I want to make friends with your sister.”

I made a semi-homemade pizza for dinner, and spent most of the evening catching up the website. Kuniko called and I got a chance to chat with her. Now I’m off to bed. Tomorrow is another busy day at school with more skits. I hope nobody gets injured.

Kuniko and I got up early, had a quick breakfast, and then caught the crowded train to Kyoto station. It’s only two stops away on the super rapid express, but a lot of people had the same idea so we were squeezed into the train. This doesn’t happen as much as you would think, but when it does you always wonder how it can be legal. What if there was an accident? How am I supposed to extract myself in a hurry?

At the station they had a pretty big Christmas tree up, and a succession of jazz musicians playing live music to entertain the people sitting around.

Our first stop was Tofukuji, a big temple just to the south of the station. We arrived in another packed train, and followed the stream of people into the temple ground. It was crazy how many people there were, and we all had to cram through a wooden bridge to reach the main entrance.

This year was supposed to be poor for viewing the trees, because we had so many typhoons this season – there weren’t many leaves left on the trees to turn color. It was better than I expected – I went nuts taking pictures, as Kuniko will surely attest to.

We didn’t actually go inside the temple because the line was monstrous, and instead we walked around to some other small temples and enjoyed some quiet time away from the crowds.

Our next stop was back at Kyoto station where we caught some Chinese food for lunch, and then it was a bus trip to Ginkakuji, the silver pavilion. I’ve been to Kinkakuji before – the gold pavilion, and it’s quite impressive because the outside is covered with gold. The silver pavilion, despite it’s name, has no silver, but is no less beautiful.

The history of the silver pavilion is interesting because the silver covering the walls was pillaged in the 1700’s by Spanish dentists in a bid to improve dental conditions in pre-Colonial Japan.

Not really. I just made that up. I’m not sure why there is no silver on the pavilion. But the grounds were great, and we walked all over the place taking more pictures. There was a peaceful waterfall, and everywhere the ground was sprinkled with Japanese maple leaves ranging in color from yellow to red.

After Ginkakuji we walked along a road that ran alongside a small steam for a mile or so. At the end of that road was another area full of shrines and temples.

By the end of the day we were both tired out. We had dinner at a ramen place in Shin-Osaka station, and I headed home around 8 p.m. I’m glad I was able to take that trip – last year I didn’t get to see much of the color change.

Today was a nice relaxing day – just cleaning up around the house and catching up on a few things I’ve been meaning to do. I spoke with my grandfather, who recently turned 94, and he was as feisty as ever. I went over to Ito Yokado and got a grilled chicken breast and made a sandwich here at home.

Around four o’clock I took the train into Akashi and did a little Christmas shopping. It’s strange to shop for Christmas presents here – everyone has lots of Christmas decorations, but buying a lot of presents isn’t really common here. I guess it’s just a celebration of the time of year.

Anyway, I had a blast shopping, and with armloads of extra baggage I hopped the next train to Osaka.

Kuniko was there cooking dinner for us when I arrived, and I got a real treat – homemade oden. Oden is great cold weather food – it’s a tasty broth with lots of different kinds of vegetables and then some fish cake-type things that are floating around. It really is good, although the concept is a bit hard to explain. You eat it with a bit of hot mustard, and Kuniko had bought a couple of beers to go with it.

I got caught up on Japanese TV, and then it was off to bed. Tomorrow is the big trip to Kyoto to see the changing leaves.

Mr. Hayashi was at a judo match today, so I took over one of his classes alone. I had some worksheets for them to work on, and I also gave them a short quiz. I was surprised that after I passed out the quiz, a lot of the students tried to cheat by looking at their books. I walked around and made faces at the ones I caught, and some of their textbooks were confiscated temporarily. They were just trying to see how much they could get away with, and I’ll report back to Mr. Hayashi later on. He’s probably not too concerned.

The history teacher came by to talk with me and we had two long conversations about the role of the state vs. the federal government in education (his topic) and also about his lack of success with girls (my topic). I’ve been hard on the history teacher in these pages and I will probably continue to be hard on him – he takes tons of my time and then when he feels guilty about it he buys me dinner to buy another few months of conversations. Other teachers have told me that they stay away when the history teacher is around, otherwise they’d like to talk to me. Students also are scared off when he is around.

It struck me today while I was walking down the hallways that in any given week I spend more time talking to the history teacher than I do Kuniko. There’s something wrong with that.

What do I do about it? Nothing, for now. What would you do? I’m sure a bright idea will come to me someday. For now, I will endure. I just think that not only is he taking up a ton of my time, but he is hogging up a resource (me) that is intended for the whole school.

The mystery of the New Belgium box is solved. My dad e-mailed me and said that he had met a representative from New Belgium, one Dave Macon, who was nice enough to send the package to me. Thanks Dave! I’m going to wear the T-shirt today and maybe the hat tomorrow in Kyoto.

I went to the yakitori with Yasu tonight, and we had a big dinner and lots of beer. There were a lot of regulars there, and so I got to chat with everyone. The guy that works at the liquor store across town came by. He speaks great English – so he was happy to get the chance to talk. He was wondering why I don’t walk by his store anymore, and so I explained about the new train station.

Yasu and I trucked out of there, and we staggered down the road towards the apartments. Yasu told me about a new word he learned in English – “reeling”. He said that we were “reeling” along the sidewalk. Good usage Yasu!

Tomorrow I’m headed into Osaka, and Sunday Kuniko and I are going to take the short trip to Kyoto to do some sightseeing. Should be fun!

Today after school, two members of the ESS club and I made hand-turkeys to celebrate Thanksgiving. We spent a lot of time talking about turkeys. Turkeys don’t run around Japan, so the closest connection I could make was that you could buy turkey legs at Universal Studios in front of the Jurassic Park ride.

I got a much-needed haircut on the way home, and then went to Uozumi to pick up a package that the post had tried to deliver yesterday. It turned out that they didn’t have it, so I went home and an hour later they delivered it. I had no idea what it could be – I’m not expecting anything and it’s a little early for Christmas.

The package had a New Belgium Brewing Company sticker on the side, and the first thing I thought was “They ship beer to Japan?” Inside the box was a Fat Tire T-shirt and baseball cap. Excellent – they both fit perfectly.

There was nothing in the box or on it to tell who sent it – it was sent straight from the brewery. If you sent the goodies – thank you very much! Let me know who you are so I can thank you!

The big news around the teacher’s room was that Carrefour is pulling out of Japan. It was only a few months ago that the new store opened near my house. I’ve talked about how empty the place has been when I’ve visited lately, but I guess this news is more closely related to the parent company in France. They are having a hard time, so they are looking for buyers for their stores in Japan, and are planning to pull out in three years time.

Today I was having a conversation with Mr. Kimura, and the history teacher sat at the desk next to me expectantly. I just ignored him and continued my conversation with Mr. Kimura, but Mr. Kimura was a little embarrassed and cut himself off. I turned to the history teacher to see what was up, and he just wanted to confirm what Tom Cruise’s real name is. He seemed astonished that I didn’t have that information at my fingertips. I apologized, and as he got up I said loudly that as soon as I find out Tom Cruise’s real name that I would let him know as soon as possible. He looked around with a red face and snuck back to his desk. Ask me about infinitives and verb clauses all day, but Tom Cruise? That’s gotta be misuse of company property.

By the way, it’s Thomas Cruise Mapother IV.

Boo-yah – shoes have been acquired. It took a trip to the outlet shops in Tarumi, but I’ve got a decent pair of dress shoes that only set me back $85. They had lots of other styles in my size, but most of them where shiny, and I’m not a big fan of shiny shoes.

Kuniko and I did a walk through of the other parts of the Tarumi shopping area – they’ve got a lot of American standards – Nike, Adidas, Columbia Sportswear, Eddie Bauer, etc. It was fun to look around and see what they had. I didn’t buy anything else, though.

We also enjoyed some time at Kobe Harborland, people watching, drinking yogurt lassi, and taking a break from the rat race. The Christmas decorations are all up and people are getting excited about the holiday season. We paid a visit to the arcade and played Jurassic Park – it was a fun game, but Kuniko was much better at it than I. We also played basketball, but it only lasted a few seconds. I stink at basketball, too.

Finally we went into the Sannomiya area to look around and get some food in Chinatown. The place was crawling with tourists, but we picked up some nikuman (pork buns) and ate those while walking around. We also did a little shopping at a Chinese goods store and I found some spicy pepper sauce that look delicious.

I’m back home and getting ready for a three day week. Tomorrow is my English lesson for Azusa-san, so I need to dig up an article to read with her.

Mr. Hayashi has said that learning a foreign language is like launching a rocket into space. He says that it takes a tremendous effort to get off the ground, but as you get higher and higher, things get easier and easier. He knows a lot about studying foreign languages – he’s been studying English since he was a junior high school student more than 40 years ago.

Over the past month or two I feel like I’ve been getting close to the point where things improve exponentially. After a little more than two years of Japanese language studies, I can speak broken but conversational Japanese. I can read about 500 kanji characters, and have no difficulty reading simple Japanese. The more I study, the more I find things that just seem to make sense, and words that I had learned and forgotten are now bubbling up to the surface at just the right times.

Most of all, I’ve found that I really enjoy learning a foreign language. It’s one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I often hear from Mr. Hayashi that I’m working too hard, that I don’t really need to know Japanese, that it’s useful only in Japan, that it’s a waste of my efforts. Today I had a conversation over lunch with one of my teachers that until today hadn’t said a word to me. I chatted with him about the weather, his hobbies, his weekend, and my background in California. This is someone that I never would have been able to get to know – someone that was waiting for me to break the barrier. It made me feel great to be able to do that, and made the hours and hours of study seem worthwhile.

Some of my teachers sleep in between classes. Some smoke and gossip. Others play solitaire on their computers. I study so hard that I can feel the wrinkles in my brain forming.

It’s not all wine and roses, though. I continue to struggle with long conversations, I rely on the same set of limited vocabulary – my brain seems to resist using the new words that I memorize each day. I overuse the Japanese words for “but…” and “many”. My accent continues to identify me as a foreigner, even over the phone. Mr. Hayashi has been helping me with that.

In two weeks I’ll be taking the Japanese Language Proficiency Test in Kobe. I’ll be going for Level 3. Level 2 is the next step, and Level 1 is said to be impossible for people not of Asian descent. My goal is to pass Level 2, but it’s a lofty goal. Whether or not I pass level 3 in December, I’m going to continue to study Japanese in a big way.

The Japanese focus a lot of attention on achievement tests and proficiency exams. People have given me lots of advice on how to pass the exams, and what to do to squeak by, but in the end my goal is not pass an exam, but to speak and understand Japanese well – “ぺらぺら” in Japanese.

Tomorrow I’m planning on continuing my search for shoes that fit in Tarumi with Kuniko. It’s a holiday to celebrate Labor/Thanksgiving, whatever that means. It nicely cuts up my week and will make it easy to slide through to the weekend.

Success or failure, I’ll report on my shoe shopping exploits tomorrow!

Kuniko and I made some breakfast this morning – eggs and toast with corn soup – but other than that we slept in for a long time. We watched more TV, and I enjoyed watching a show where two people take a journey around a particular area. One is treated like a king, and the other like a pauper. One guy is hitchhiking around, while the other guy is driving a Ferrari from place to place.

We had an early lunch – Kuniko has found Habanero curry, and so we tried that out. It was plenty hot – too hot for Kuniko but just right for me. I was sweating big time after eating it. Then we went into Umeda to do some more shopping.

This time we found an L.L. Bean store, and although they had no shoes bigger than an American size 10, the employee recommended the Nike store across town. We walked that way, and found some shoes that would fit me – unfortunately they were all sports shoes. We also got a tip to try to outlet stores in Tarumi, so we are planning to visit them on Tuesday, since it’s a national holiday.

Kuniko told me an interesting story about her day on Tuesday. Originally her boss told them they had to come in and cook lunch for the students and male teachers that would come in on a holiday. One of Kuniko’s co-workers went to the vice-principal and complained, so it looks like she’ll get the day off after all. I hope so. The more I hear about it, the more it sounds like a really exploitive job.

We hit a few more stores looking for a pullover sweater for Kuniko, but we didn’t have much luck. We decided to call it a day, so we went our separate ways from there, and now I’m back home relaxing. When I got home the sun was streaming in and there is something beautiful about sunlight warming a hardwood floor. It’s cooling down quick, though.

Tomorrow is just a regular busy day for me, but then I have the next day off. Lucky guy!

I slept in this morning, made up a batch of chilequiles, and even managed a phone call to the folks before I hit the road to Osaka. I met Kuniko under the giant TV in Umeda aptly named “Big Man”. For once I saw her before she saw me, and together we caught the subway to Nanba in search of some shoes to properly cover my freakishly large feet.

To make a long story short, we didn’t find none. We found a few shoe stores, but nobody had anything that looked good. Kuniko and I gave up around three o’clock, and we went back to her place to plan dinner.

I brought along a bottle of Jacob’s Creek Reserve Shiraz that I had bought in Australia, and together we had that with some ginger pork and vegetables. It was so good. To wrap up the day we watched television for a while.

Japanese television for me holds seemingly endless fascination. I can understand very little of what is going on, but Kuniko will sit next to me and laugh and laugh. I always seem to be there on Saturday nights, so I’m familiar at least with the shows. They are really crazy – hard to imagine anything like these flying in the U.S.A.

We had bought a couple of pieces of cake from a local bakery, and so that was our wicked dessert. Tomorrow the plan is to search again for shoes – my fingers are crossed.