Routine

Hey folks. Still alive. Doing well actually. Many apologies again. I still can't get internet at home, and since I'm still technically living off savings until my first pay check comes (they often delay your first paycheck a month here, don't know why, but I don't see money), not that I'm officially supposed to get paid until my visa approval comes (which it won't for another good three or four weeks probably), I've been needing to conserve my resources as much as possible (edit: paycheck came today--hooray!). I've also been using my credit card a fair amount as well, which probably isn't good, but can't be helped. Hopefully all that will resolve itself fairly soon once my visa is approved and I get to be an official human being here. Yay international bureaucracy.

Since you've been so patient, I'll make this one a longer post (I'm writing it at home anyway), but do forgive me if I ramble on and tangent off a lot. I need practice anyway. I'm planning on doing nanowrimo next month, so writing will be my friend.

So, what pray tell, is the life of this ALT (assistance language teacher) like nowdays? Here be the lowdown:

On a typical day I get up around 7:30 am, sometimes woken up earlier by the searing rays of the sun coming in through my southern porch window. Japan doesn't observe daylight savings, so it's an early day and early evening. I eat something: the healthiest I've found so far has been some (relatively) cheap fiber cereal from the discount drug store--the least healthy being convenience store bread products that have none of the afore mentioned fiber (white bread the whole country wide). Few foods here seem to have much in the way of fiber, except, of course, the actual fresh vegetables.

I leave my house around 8 am for a decent 15-20 minute bike ride through the agricultural and residential outskirts of town. Besides being on high alert for just about every Japanese driver that inadvertently will try to kill me as I try to get to my destination, it's a fairly nice ride, so long as it's not raining. It's been raining a lot recently. Those are less pleasurable days--cold and wet by the time I get to school. I've got some decent rain gear now, but it's still generally cold, and getting colder. It does at least provide some exercise though.

Getting to school around 8:20-30, I do my best to cool off from the ride and manage the drenched garments. Obligatory changing of shoes, of course. Most of the students and teachers have already arrived (around 8 am?), but since my contract says I start work at 8:30, and I usually arrive early anyway, there's really no reason to come any earlier.

And then I start my job.

My job basically consists of going to a number of English classes throughout the day and being an English speaker. There are two English teachers at my school, both with a reasonable, if basic, understanding of English. I tend to be able to communicate with them, whereas everyone else I really can't. It can be a bit of a challenge sometimes, especially if someone not one of the two teachers wants me to do something. I've also found that very few people here tend to do much of the pointing and making with hand signals (the cornerstone of surpassing language problems), and give up fairly quickly if I don't know what they're saying. Oh well.

The day is split up into six periods, though Monday and Friday both don't have a sixth period of classes. I've still not actually been able to figure out what exactly they do then, but it's some other activity or homeroom class or something. My schedule is made by one of the other English teachers, usually before I need it during the week, but sometimes not. I also get a schedule of general week activities in Japanese, which I can at least vaguely figure out if there are going to be large gaps in the schedule (which there usually are). I have about three or four classes a day, typically with either the first or third graders (grades here are renewed each school, so first graders in junior-high would equal seventh graders in the US, etc.). Whether it's a scheduling error or intentional, I have seen the second graders rarely (less than half as much as the others). I take my text book (thin, paperback thing of about 100 pages), and my worksheet collection if it's first or second grade class, and am off to read my English.

Which is on the whole boring. The text books, of course, are written to introduce language appropriately for the grade level, and tame to take into account usual Japanese politeness, so I can understand why students couldn't be more enthralled. Some of the chapters do introduce some useful English speaker attitudes and social customs (one about how Americans will greet store clerks and elevator girls--which isn't done here). The younger, more energetic (genki) students don't seem to care as much (whether it's that or the fact that they don't understand what they're parroting), but it is what it is and I don't really have an opinion. So I read them their vocabulary and their selected conversations and reading excerpts, sometimes questions, etc. Depending on the teacher (the two that are at my school are a bit different in their methods of teaching, to various and interesting results I'll have to mention at some point), I'll do my reading in English, have the kids repeat, and trade off duties of translation and Japanese grammar explanation to the Japanese teacher. This is, roughly, how it is done all over Japan as I understand. They listen to me primarily for the pronunciation, accents and pacing, and the teacher does a better job of explaining the finer grammar points.

Occasionally I'll invent some kind of activity or game or bring in a track of music that might relate to some vocabulary or point in one of their current units of study. Generally I am just an English parrot though.

I've also been pressed into helping students with English speeches they've been preparing to present (more on that below). So, I'll go over pronunciation of words, how to correctly have the accent on phrases, and how to improve the flow and presentation of dramatic speaking. It's gone fairly well.

I've also done some reading examples for their midterm tests that occurred last week. They had to report answers from my recorded reading. Fun.

In between classes, and during down time or unrestricted time during class, I'll try to engage the students in some way. Usually this amounts to not much more than, "Hi. How's it going?" (that was a good one; it's a typical greeting, but colloquial so it throws them... they will still answer the traditional, invariate and disgustingly cardboard "I'm fine thank you" answer though... still working on breaking that). The third graders have been doing better at asking more interesting questions, though still rather simple as their vocabulary is still rather slim--rather, their usable vocabulary. Many of the older students actually know a decent amount of English when written, it's the speaking ability that they need the most, and presumably one of the other reason's I was hired.

When I'm not scheduled for a class, I'll keep myself occupied with thinking of things to do with the kids, or trying to browse the internet on the (terribly) old computers that have the internet filtered so I can rarely get through to my email or any sites of use. I've been finding better ways around this lately, but it's still a slow process. And I study my Japanese using my various books and resources.

At 12:30, the lunch cart comes in to prepare the teachers' lunches. I tried out the school lunch program for the first week before entirely giving up on it. I tried to explain that I either needed to have a vegetarian lunch (which I didn't expect them to make for me) or not to give me the meat portions since I would just abandon or throw them away anyway. After a few days of reminding them I gave up and just ate around the sections I could, which were few. Somehow, the Japanese have managed to add meat to everything here, even when simple things don't really call for them. Most of the soups would be just fine without that little bit of extra bacon or whatever it is they will add. And even at the supermarket deli (which is, on the whole, hard to find), the one tofu dish they provided had a meat sauce with it. Perplexing indeed. So, I've been bringing my own lunch ever since. I cook a lot at home as well.

Most days I bring a salad I've prepared the night before. The produce at the grocery stores is rather fantastic. Fantastically expensive to match, but perfect foods do have a price. And all the vegetables are perfect. They have one kind of carrot here--and they are cartoon perfect, symmetrical, blunt and bright orange Bugs Bunny carrots. Same goes for apples (often individually wrapped in their own styrofoam jacket protectors). Grapes are (unseeded) succulent, bulbous orbs straight out of a painting--often costing about 5 times as much as anything you would see in the U.S. Melons are tiny (and perfect), often having the stem retained--and can go for upwards of $20 or more each. Bananas and some greenery (locally grown thing that looks close to spinach but is not) are about the only thing that are about the same price as back home, so I tend to get these in quantity. There is also the ginormous Japanese radish (daikon) that I can usually only buy half of a small one before it starts to go bad; they usually come about half a meter in length (perhaps only slightly shorter), and about 10 cm in diameter (for much of the length). Huge they are, and cheaper than the dirt they're planted in (usually about a dollar US for a whole one). Relatively bland (unless you really let them sit in the fridge for a week as I have found out...), but make for a decently crunchy salad, which seems to be what the Japanese do with them. They're usually cut into thin long strips and made with a light yogurty or vinegary dressing. The other fairly cheap, and apparently healthy, veg is the Japanese cucumber (small, pickle like, plentiful, cheap, and crisp). They are often combined in a similar manner with the daikon to make the afore mentioned salad.

I've also gotten a rice cooker recently and been making more creative dishes at home that, pending leftovers, will often go to lunch. And with the timer function, can have my natto for breakfast as well. Finally found a grocery store that had a (very expensive) curry paste (without meat in it as most every pre-packaged curry meal does) and made myself a rather decent "red curry" with some yams, lotus root, and onion and garlic. Couldn't find any coconut milk though. I have managed to also find some decent brown rice. Most brown rice in the stores is extremely expensive. I have figured this is primarily because the pre-packaged brown rice (genmai) is rarely eaten, and must therefore be premium grade to appeal to the Japanese palate. I have since found another place that will sell me genmai at a fraction of the regular store price (about a 1/4 as much). I think this is because the cheaper genmai is actually intended for customers to buy (in it's un-polished state) and have it polished in store while they do their shopping. The place had a number of genmai varieties and some large machinery nearby, so I can only assume. The cheaper genmai seems to be polished less than the premium stuff I was buying, and has a bit more of the chaff on the outside. Still tastes fine by my standard, which is significantly different to the Japanese's.

When I first started my salads I would get quite a few interesting looks from the staff. Many were impressed by their size (I usually fill a ziplock cube container with salad--plenty enough even to fill me up) and their lack of anything else (though I have been adding red beans and garbanzos to the mix, as well as some nice snack crisps that work well as crutons). I will often also supplement my lunch with some inarizushi (little fried and seasoned tofu pockets filled with sushi rice) that can be found in any supermarket's deli section (and often half-price if you go later in the evening).

The Japanese lunches tend to have some sort of main meat product (often a fried fish), a small bowl of soup, some vegetable (steamed broccoli or the afore mentioned salad), and sometimes a bread item (which they cal pan--as the Portuguese gave them the idea for that).

After 15 minutes of lunch, everyone else puts all the dirty dishes back on the cart, discarded food back in the (invariable) (literal) bucket from which the soup came, folds their half-pint milk carton (everyday!!!) and stacks them in a neat pile. Then there is the 15 minutes cleanng period which every student in the school does some kind of cleaning either in their classroom or some schedule of rotation in other parts of the building. After the first few days I was pressed into helping clean the teacher's office, though happily. However, it's mostly a show of good faith--though I try my best. The students tend not to clean so much as polish off areas already cleaned the previous day. In as much, real cleaning would imply moving objects and getting areas that might build up dirt, crevices, underneath desks, and the like. But no. No objects, save the occasional chair for an obvious piece of grit, do the students move. I've found rather large dust bunnies (kurokuroske) lurking in plain view, that take little more than a creative movement of the broom to remove. This is assuming the students do much toward cleaning in the first place. Sometimes they don't really even try to look busy.

This period of cleaning also has a soundtrack, the exact same sequence everyday, broadcast school-wide:
-Main Theme to Indiana Jones
-Chariots of Fire by Vangelis
-Ghostbusters (main theme song with English lyrics)
-Chariots of Fire again

After putting in a good 5-10 minutes of sweeping and occasionally trying to encourage the students to do some actual cleaning, I finish and return to my desk, awaiting the next class, or go back to the internet or Japanese studying. After lunch are the remaining two periods and a short period of end of day nothingness. I am officially allowed to leave at 4:15 pm. Many days I stay late just to use the internet longer since I try to not look like I'm hogging the computer during the day.

However, two other teachers at school, around my age, accosted me early on to have me teach them some English. I have no idea how to do this officially, so I mostly just hold a basic conversation time with them, cover simple aspects of English small talk, and mostly use them to help figure more out about the town and life in Japan. We usually try to meet on Wednesdays and Fridays, pending actual schedule conflicts, meetings, and holidays. They've also helped me go shopping, figure out what to say and translation items. So, it's nice to have a few friends at least. I'll usually end up staying till about 5 pm or even later depending on my after school schedule (which is still fairly non-existent).

On the whole, the above daily schedule has only actually happened once or twice. Almost every week thus far (I count eight) has had some kind of holiday or major school activity that doesn't allow for the regular schedule. So far there have been two holidays: Mondays so far, though next week there's a Friday off. There was the all-school sports day: this involved about two weeks of abbreviated class schedules (45 minutes each as opposed to the usual 50 minute periods for each class; and only 5 minutes to the usual 10 for in between time) to allow for training and practice for their team games, track and field type activities, etc. One day was the actual sports day competition, which had no classes, had parents come in to cheer them on, etc (another post on this sometime later). Or, like this weekend, we had Thursday off to switch the school day to Saturday for an all day cultural exhibition. It mostly consisted of each grade and class singing a selected song and then performances from the school artistic clubs (dance club, jazz club, flute club, band, etc.). They also showed off some of their other class activities on posters around the school (one I managed to find out was a dying experiment using household agents to dye white yarn and test its adherence when washed). A fun show in general. I also got to participate with the song performed by the teaching staff and gave a brief demonstration of what entailed my English speech coaching: several students chose to write a speech in English, memorize, and perform as part of a competition. One of my students actually did very well, though had most of her training and speech done before I came on the scene.


After all that, it's another bike ride home. The way back is significantly easier as it seems to be mostly downhill on return, making the morning a bit more vigorous. Along the way I also pass several interesting landmarks.

One is the Nagano shinkansen (famous Japanese bullet trains) track that runs split through the city (the shinkansen track leads NW out of Tokyo to Nagano and the north-west shore of Japan). Our city isn't actually a stop on it (that's two train stops away, but still reasonably convenient, if also very expensive). I often see it blazing past in the morning or afternoon.

The other is the recently built, still novel, gigantic multi-purpose facility for Fukaya known as the "Fukaya Big Turtle." It is literally named Fukaya Big Turtle (in Engilsh). It's an arena facility with an attached physical fitness area and such, architecturally bearing a large green tome over the arena section giving it its name. Only popped my head in briefly as I still need my alien registration card to use the facilities. Soon... Soon... hopefully...

And lastly there's the reasonably sized park reserve next to the Fukaya Big Turtle, which also has a Shinto temple or shrine on one section of the grounds. Some nice forested areas that have some jogging tracks and areas to sit in relative secluded nature.

The rest of Fukaya is residential, bedroom community sprawl intermixed with small family farm plots.

Fukaya is also known for two major agricultural products (as it was primarily an agricultural town before it became said bedroom community). Negi (which are large Japanese leek style onions) and tulips (which are more of a spring thing, so I'll keep ya posted). Their individualized man-hole cover has the tulip detailed. The negi are everywhere else in force (which are also cheap at the grocery store, though I've yet to figure out a good use for it as it is a *whole* lotta onion). I've also seen a fair amount of cabbage and lettuce like plants being grown for harvest, as well as plenty of rice (all over Japan).

Incidentally, one of the free English entertainment and activity magazines produced out of the Kansai area (Osaka/Kyoto) called Japanzine (the other being Metropolis for Tokyo) has a back page taken after the Onion that has named itself "The Negi", complete with picture. I also recommend the interesting Engrish flavor of Ask Kazuhide; a Japanese with enough English to manage writes a rather hilarious write-in column..

When I get home I undress from my shirt and slacks, often replacing with t-shirt and regular pants, and am free.

To do very little. No internet, few friends to speak of, and not much to do in Fukaya. Still working on that. Truth be told I've managed to get into some gaming groups and find some other people to talk to, though they tend to be generally spread all over Tokyo, which is hell on transportation costs.

I've talked briefly with a few of the other ALTs here in Fukaya, usually meeting them in the supermarket (everyone eats, and there's not much else to do here...), complaining of the distinct lack of night life and activities for young adults. There are plenty of restaurants, and pachinko parlors, just like everywhere else in Japan. But no coffee shops, few if any recognizable bar-clubs--not that I tend to frequent either, but the former would at least be a start. Presumably there are activities for other folk like me, but it's hard to find them without the language ability, or internet (and even then, the northern Saitama area is not covered terrible well online--unless you know Japanese). Working on learning Japanese. It's a hard language.

So, many of my nights are spent reading or watching DVDs borrowed from the conversant/friends at work, or playing some of the video games I've managed to find online when I do finally go (a decent 15 minute bike ride) to the internet/manga/relaxation cafe (this one's known as "The Club") and pay for my time there. Occasionally I'll go biking or exploring via train to the nearby cities and places, hang out in the park. Now days its usually dark by the time school gets out though. It's still hard to discern what's available without good language ability, and other cities I'm also limited to foot travel if I take the train, so that can limit distances. But, I'm doing okay. I got a fair number of books when I found a few decent and used book shops in Tokyo, and I don't currently find myself bored.

So, all in all, a perfect time to write a novel. Yeah, sounds good.

Thank you if you've read this far. I will hopefully make more numerous, frequent, shorter posts. And especially when I can actually get internet in my apartment.

Till next time. Take care!