I'm in a foul mood at the moment. I'm not quite sure why. It's not been a great week - classes and work stuff have been fine, but the weather has managed to go from freezing and rainy to muggy and overcast, so maybe SAD is kicking in again a bit. Most annoying by far though has been my laptop dying on me - I've managed to narrow it down to the power supply so all I need is someone to poke it and then install a new one. I took it into Joshin today and they looked encouraging, taking it in and saying they'd call me in 2-3 weeks. No sooner had I got back into my flat that the phone rang. I couldn't quite understand everything he said but I'm pretty sure it was something along the lines of "ah, this is an English laptop, and therefore must be made out of moon rocks, pixie dust and twigs, we couldn't possibly fix it." It makes you want to scream. There's this mystical idea of computer branding which is a complete farce - they all have the same crap inside them. Just because there's a different word embossed on the front doesn't mean a pissing thing.
There's a bit of professional / existential angst as well which is all bound up in general grumpiness, and maybe some of it is culture shock related too - there's certainly stuff here we were warned about. I'll try to write more about it when I'm feeling a bit more objective and articulate. And won't use words like 'pissing' as an adjective, which simply will not do.
I saw these on my way home from work today:
They are the Koi flags, and are part of the Kodomo no hi (Children's Day) celebrations which take place officially on May 5th. It is a day of celebration and wishing the health and fortune of all children, originally boys but nowadays both. Quite why carp are used I'm not sure. I really like them though - they're beautiful and look wonderfully dotty stuck on the side of an otherwise normal building on an otherwise normal street.
A good day at Junior High school today, some fun lessons - particularly some good word games with the 2nd graders. We were doing a version of Pictionary where they write down the word for each picture I draw on the board, and then the first letter of each word spells a new word. It gets a bit difficult with longer words, but they managed it pretty well.
There's been a lot of stuff in the news recently about this spat between Japan and China. It seems that for all the issues raised there is a general basic undercurrent of competition - Japan is trying to retain its number one economy spot in Asia, and China doesn't want Japan to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. I must say though that it's very difficult to sympathise with Japan over all the issues of glossing over wartime atrocities. Koizumi has been rubbing everyone up the wrong way for ages by insisting on anually visiting Yasukuni Shrine, which honours (among thousands of others) convicted war criminals, and Japan is renowned for not facing up to the reality of just what happened at places like Nanking. Recently though, the focal point for the war history spat has been the endorsing of new school text books in Japan which allegedly gloss over said wartime atrocities. I've been following all this on the Guardian online, BBC online and also the Daily Yomiuri (which is a respected Japanese English-language daily broadsheet), and it's struck me how everything has been rather badly reported in some respects. For all this stuff about the text books, it's really hard to find an article that actually quotes any passages from them. I did finally find one the other day, and indeed it does refer to events at Nanking as an 'incident' as opposed to the more widely appropriated 'massacre', and also apparently contained the passage: 'The Chinese troops were crushed, and the population of Nanking was once again able to live their lives in peace'. If the definition of 'peace' bore more of a resemblance to 'were either butchered or used as sex slaves for the Japanese military and then butchered', then there would be much less cause for concern. However, it was only buried deep in the article did I find a rather crucial detail. You'd be forgiven for assuming, as I had done, that the text books in question were a new set that were to be used in every school up and down Japan. In fact, they are provided by an extreme rightwing group and are used by less than 1% of schools in Japan because they are widely known by Japanese history teachers to grossly distort the truth. Everything I'd read up to that point made it sound like these books were in the schoolbags of every Japanese schoolkid between the ages of 13 and 18, which is pretty far from the truth. Now, there is still a problem in that the Japanese government has still approved these text books for use in certain schools if the teachers wish, and that in itself is hugely objectionable, but you wonder how many people actually know the scale of their distribution. It's starting to feel a bit like the facts are playing second fiddle to something else.
Due to the recent merging of Nagaoka City with several of the surrounding villages, there has been upheavel in the various administrative parts of city hall, including several reshuffles in the Board of Education. The only change for us is a change of name: we are no longer the Jinzai Kyoiku Centre but the Eigo Shitsudou Shitsu (English teaching room), which suits all of us except Tsuchida-sensei for whom phone answering is now something of a challenge (Eigo Shitsudou Shitsu Tsuchida desu).
Anyway, because of the new staff at the BoE, we had a welcome enkai which produced this little gem of cultural insight:
(Washio-sensei is my boss' boss)
Me: "... yes, so that's Nessie, who lives in Scotland. Are there monsters in Japan?'
Washio-sensei: "ah, not so many monsters.."
Me: "but there must be some?"
WS: "ah, we do have Kappa."
Me: "Kappa? What is Kappa like? Does he have a big scaly back like Nessie?" [mime: Loch Ness Monster Shape]
WS: "ah, he has, how you say, like turtle? Shell. He has a shell on his back."
Me: "Oh. Well, what about horns? Does he have big sharp horns to impale you with?" [mime: Bunny Ears]
WS: "No. On his head, he has a plate, with water. If he, if the water falls, water spills out, he will die."
Me: "Ah." (slightly disappointed) "Well, does he have sharp teeth [mime: Dr Zoidburg's Mouth] and jump [mime: Jazz Hands] out at you?"
WS: "Not so much. More of a beak."
Me: (getting desperate) "Well, is he dangerous at all?"
WS: "Ah, not so dangerous. Favourite is cucumber."
God it's nice to be back doing classes again - the three weeks of Spring vacation was starting to do my nut in. Because it's a) school holidays and b) the end of the school year, there are no lessons we can plan (we don't even know for sure who we're teaching) and no props or games we can make, so we basically have to find things to do. This week however has seen term start again, and today I made a grand total of:
4 microphones
a map of europe
about 40 business cards
and 2 sticks of dynamite.
More excitingly though, CONGRATULATIONS once again to Esther and Andrew who have both got onto JET for next year and will be coming out here in August - you're going to love it.