The Weather in Japan

This post is in response to the many emails and posts I get asking me to discuss the weather here in Japan. No, that's a joke. Nobody emails me and nobody posts. And if they did, I doubt they would ask me about the weather in Japan. Low-interest mortgages, Christian singles online, penis enlargement, breast enlargement, perhaps, but not about the weather.
However, the weather plays an important role in life here. In fact, the Japanese discuss the weather. A lot. When I lived in Taiwan, the surest way of starting a conversation was to inquire about whether the other person had eaten or if they knew of a good food stall. In fact, the Taiwanese expression for hello (ja ba buei) literally translates to "Have you eaten yet?". In Japan, the surest way of beginning a conversation is to mention the weather. Though it sounds corny to American ears, discussing the weather is an especially good topic here and one which Japanese people seem to enjoy greatly. Traditionally, letters and speeches are begun with a salutation and some comment on the weather. The arrival of fall, the coming of spring, etc.
Thus, this post. Right now, it's cold. My fellow gaijin sensei would describe it as "damn cold" but I'm a true Washingtonian, so it's only long-sleeve shirt weather. However, in the upper reaches of Hiroshima prefecture, there is quite a bit of snow - that's where the fore and aft pictures were taken. Here in Kure, there is very little rain and cloudy days are intermitent. It does get quite chilly at night and without central air or any insulation in the walls, my apartment gets a bit nippy. Fortunately, I have an electric coil space heater circa 1972 that is not dangerous at all, mostly because I haven't actually seen it shoot sparks.
Like in Taiwan, the weather in Japan can change quite rapidly. I remember back home, clouds would lazily drift across the sky, like fat people strolling in Georgia. Here, the things scoot around like skinny Mississippi crackheads late for a Klan meeting.
I'm told the spring time is lovely and the world famous cherry blossoms will be blooming soon. Sort of an anti-climactic thing - they are just flowers, after all - but I'm sure it will be nice. I'll take some pictures of them, too. For now, here's the snow.

Elementary

In addition to my two junior highs, I also work at 4 different elementary schools (shougakko) - Tatsukawa, Kojinmachi, Miyahara, and Tsubonouchi. I typically visit an elementary school for half a day, usually in the afternoon. Though I only go to one particular school maybe twice a month, since I have so many, I have at least two elementary visits a week - sometimes three.
Teaching at elementary is my least favorite thing about my job, for many reasons. I like the kids, they are interesting, very curious, and of all my students, they are the most likely to talk to me. I wish I could extract the same desire for communication out of my recalcitrant junior high students. The elementary kids are alwasy happy to see me and, with the notable exception of the sixth graders, are good learners and motivated. Still, whenever I see an elementary visit on my schedule, I silently wince, wish for a cancellation, and utter my second-favorite Japanese word, "taigee". This literally means "tiring" but it is a catch-all slang term used by those in the Hiroshima area for things which they do not want to do. I hear this A LOT in my English classes.
Here are my complaints about elementary:
1) I don't see the students enough. At each school, which class I teach is rotated. This means that, even though I have made perhaps 10 visits to Tsubonouchi, I haven't seen any one particular class more than 3 times. This means that the students aren't accustomed to me and I'm still every bit a novelty. This also means that it is more than a month between visits for any particular class, so it's like I'm starting all over again.
2) The lessons aren't reinforced. Unlike at the junior high level, English is not required ciriculum for elementary students. Thus, very (very) few of the teachers speak it. This is not especially a problem for me in relation to the Japanese teachers because I speak enough Japanese to conduct class and to chat with them during break times. It is a problem in that the teachers don't go over the covered material with the students, so each time I visit a class, it is as though I was never there before. The only students who remember what I taught last time are the ones who go to cram school and study on their own time. And yet, the school wants me to "advance" with the curriculum as though the students have mastered what we've already covered.
3) I'm always treated as a guest. Don't get me wrong, the elementarys treat me very well. They always smile and greet me, bring me tea, do my copying, and generally pamper me. However, this is how guests are treated. At my junior highs, I do my own copying, and I often pour tea for my co-workers because I'm the most junior member (this is my choice, not a requirement). As such, I'm accepted as a (almost) fellow teacher at my junior highs. At the elementarys I'm just a guest.
4) Really small sandals. Okay, this may sound like a nitpicky thing, but read on anyway. You mustn't wear street shoes inside the schools, so I brought three pairs of sandals for indoors. One pair is at home and two pairs are at my two junior highs. Since I'm always shuttling around between elementary schools, I often can't bring my own sandals and so I must wear the school's. Though they are adult size, I could probably have fit into them when I was in elementary school. Picture me stalking around the school, Tyrannosaurus-like while a cadre of pint-sized kids scuttle behind me snickering.

Really, it's not that bad .. the visits are short and only mildly painful. The problem is, that it could be so much better. Kids learn so well at that age and I think the city is truly wasting a golden opportunity by running the program the way they do. But, hey, I'm just a silly gaijin who can't fit into his slippers.
(( Above and below are not pictures of my elementary students, but they are of similar age and disposition ))

Judy and Dustin Visit

Two weeks after my family left Japan, my girlfriend Judy and Dustin, my roommate from Taiwan, arrived. They were set to arrive in Tokyo's Narita airport. That same day, I took a four-hour bullet train ride from Hiroshima and arrived in Tokyo to discover that it was snowing. Apparently, it was the first time it had snowed in Tokyo this year and it was much earlier than in previous years. So, I checked into my hotel, waited around for a while and then made my way out to Narita. They were scheduled to arrive at 7pm, so I arrived at 6pm. I knew something was wrong when I looked at the arrivals board and the most recent flight going through customs was a 4:10. Since the snow was unnexpected, the airport was delaying many of the flights. Judy and Dustin were circling the airport for several hours, though I didn't know this. At 9:45, there was a general announcement that all flights that had not yet landed were being redirected. I asked three different people at three different counters, but no one knew if her flight had actually landed or not. The main problem with this was that the last train leaving Narita (nearly an hour outside of Tokyo) was at 10:30. At 10:45, Judy called me from another passenger's cell phone to say she had landed at Haneda Airport, a smaller domestic airport south of the city. Stuck, I decided to take a taxi, which turned out to be much cheaper than I expected. I met Judy at the hotel at 4am and we crashed until 11 the next day.


The next day, Dustin, Judy, and I headed to the Ryogoku Kokugukikan to watch the final day of the January sumo tournament (Hatsu Basho). As my loyal readers will recall, I'm quite a die-hard sumo fan now. I spent most of the time trying to explain the sport to Judy and Dustin, who were surprisingly intrigued by it. It was a great day, but we were all incredibly tired. Afterwards, we jetted around to some semi-famous locations and had some dynamite sushi at a "sushi-go-round" as my Dad calls them (kaitenzushi for you Japanese speakers). The next morning, which was quite blustery and frigid, we visited the famous Asakusa Shrine and then hopped on a bullet train to Hiroshima.


The first night in Kure we had a nice dinner with Mel and Jason and then the following day with an assortment of other AETs in Kure. Mel and Jason were kind enough to put Dustin up while he was in town, and he was quite impressed with their kindness and warmth, as are we all.
Then came the so-called purpose of the trip. Dustin and I have been planning to bring some Taiwanese students to Japan this summer for a tour and we wanted to use this time to explore possible venues. Somewhere along the way, I mentioned Shikoku as a possible place and that ended up sticking. So we all trouped over to Shikoku on the ferry and then caught a bus to Kotchi, on the Pacific coast. This turned out to be a large tactical error. For starters, Kotchi is a boring, lifeless city, very similar to many other Japanese cities. In addition, the Shikoku transportation system is quite old and inconvenient, so to go anywhere takes a tremendous amount of time. We spent most of our time in Shikoku travelling and when we weren't travelling, we were planning to travel. At some point, we decided to scrap the whole Shikoku thing.


We returned to Kure and realized Dustin would be leaving on Monday morning. He wanted to go into Hiroshima, so we said goodbye on Saturday. It was great to have him here and it really made me miss having him as a roommate. Dustin is a lot of fun and has a unique spirit. He brightens up any room he enters. He is also a tremendous photographer, as the pictures above and below this caption will attest. The above is Kotchi Castle at dusk and below is a siloutte of a man fishing at dawn. While we were in Kotchi, Dustin decided to make the best of it and got up at 4am to go trapsing around the area taking photos. This is one of the best I've seen. You'll have to ask him about his adventures that morning - he tells it better.


After Dustin left, Judy and I still had a week left together. On the Saturday that Dustin left for Hiroshima, we had a the regular crew (Mel, Jason, Brandon, Asuka, Simon, Sally, and Masato) over for Chinese New Year's dinner. I think I cooked chili, which isn't very Chinese, but it feeds a lot of people. Afterwards, we all went out to Karaoke (I think our third trip to Shidax that week) and everyone showed off their singing voices (or not-so-singing-voices in my case).
Though Judy and I went up to Hiroshima and saw the Peace Park and went out with Noriko to explore Kure and Diamond City (a huge shopping mall), we spent most of the time chilling and hanging out. I was so happy to have her here and it was great living with her, though only for a little while. She enjoyed Japan a lot, and she's planning to come back for an extended visit in July, which will make the end of my time here that much more enjoyable.
So that was the trip. After those two weeks, it took me nearly another two weeks to get back into the groove of work and not really working again. I miss Judy terribly, but I'm encouraged by the prospect of seeing her again in May when I'll lead a group of fellow AETs on a tour of southern Taiwan. Yay!

The Family Visits (Pt. 2)

Noriko helped me show the family around Kure a bit, including a visit to the Ondo Bridge, which is where the above picture was taken. We stopped at 1930's crane and paused for a bit while Dad tinkered around inside trying to determine who was responsible for the manifold safety violations. We tried to drive to the top of Mt. Haigamine, the tallest mountain/hill in the ridge surrounding Kure. However, there was still some residule snow and ice on the shady parts of the road and Noriko's car couldn't make it up. We also explored Niko Gorge and it's lovely dual waterfalls, which Greg and I climbed to the top of. We finished the day with a trip to Hiroshima Castle and then a marvelous yakiniku feast at Noriko's.

Around New Year's, we met up with our former Kure exchange student, Natsuki. She has recently graduated from college and is working in Tokyo as a systems analyst. Her English is much improved and she still has the same winning smile and charm. We went to the temple-island of Miyajima (my 8th such trip) and took in the sights there. She had also joined us for karaoke earlier in the week.

For the last four days, we made our way back up toward Osaka, and on the way stopped at Kyoto and Nara. Kyoto was the capital of Japan until the Tokugawa (Edo) period, when it was moved to Tokyo (then called Edo). Kyoto remeined the home of the emperor until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. It was also the largest city left unbombed during WWII and so has many ancient temples and other artifacts that can't be found in other cities. There were too many sites to see in such a short trip, but we did take in the Golden and Silver Pavillions, Nanzenji Temple, and the National Art Museum.

Our final stop was the ancient city of Nara, which was the first capital of a unified Japan, toward the end of the 8th century. The highlight of this rather short side-trip was the Daibutsu (literally Big Buddha), a 70ft statue of Buddha housed in a cavernous wooden temple called Todaiji. I at first expected something of a tourist trap, similar to the famed Giant Ball of String. However, upon entering the temple I was immediately blown away by the size of the statue. It was built in the early 9th century using the most advanced technologies of the time and it is a sight to behold. Unfortunately, pictures don't do it real justice.

So, with that, we made our way to Osaka for the family's final night. Dad, Greg, and I went out that night in search of a famous chankonabe (sumo soup) restaurant run by a former yokozuna, but were unsuccesful. Still, we did end up finding a place that served the delicious concoction. Overall, we all enjoyed our time together and the family enjoyed their trip to Japan. I, of course, stayed behind and am continuing my interesting if somewhat mundane life here. I'm so happy that Dad, Mom, and Greg came and brought some color and vibrance to my life for two weeks.