A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

This is a prelude to a big old 'what I've been up to ' post

There is a tendency among some Japanese to learn phrases rather than words and to repeat them often. There is also some need to include phrases, relevant or otherwise, at formal occasions. This is the only explanation I can find for my friend's birthday card that read "Happy Birthday. Where there's a will, there's a way".
My favourite example of this phenomenon was the Japanese man who, being a huge fan of Terminator 2, had memorised some of the lines from the film and sat down to dinner with "Thank you for your co-operation". The evening included several more quotes and peaked wit a (non-terminator related) "Necessity is the mother of invention" out of the blue. Towards the end of the evening I had to thank him for the kind words but correct him on a few points: I wasn't wearing boots, didn't have a motorcycle and he already seemed to have clothes of his own.
One of my Japanese teachers has started vocabulary drills with little phrases at the top, I can only assume this is an act of passing on the tradition to a new generation of Japanese people. This morning the phrase is "Many a little makes a mickle". Therein lies the brilliance of this nonsense. There is no way that the teacher knows that a 'mickle' is a Scottish word for a large amount (yes, I looked it up), but equally she won't appreciate how esoteric the word itself is. There's an awful lot of poor English knocking around Japan, (the Engrish phenomenon) and I will share a bit that I have found at the end, but this is a distinct phenomenon and can be a lot more amusing.

In other news, I recently left the comfort of the Ibaraki prefecture and travelled north to a place called Fukushima. Fukushima is a place of mystery and wonder with at least one huge karaoke bar, some onsen and a Next store. More on this 'adventure' at some point in the future.

Note: If you are reading this on facebook or through a reader you might have to click through to the original to see the photos. Of course, if you ARE reading this on Facebook, you can look at the photos in my album 'Japanglish'
Peace out, homes.

Bad Morning

This time our hero is incredibly frustrated and needs a rant

I'm in school on a Saturday, which is pretty rubbish in itself. It's OK though, because I have Monday off in lieu and Tuesday is a bank holiday, so I get a three-day weekend. It's PTA presentation day.
At about 8:00 I was told that I was taking the head of English's class in the computer room. For months I have been trying to organise an email exchange between this school and my mate Gemma's school in Chester. Today, the computer room was booked (as opposed to last time when it wasn't booked and there was another class in there) but there were no English teachers available. This meant that I was left with a class full of kids that don't understand English, and was expected to get them to write an email and send it to me.
I don't like lessons in computer rooms at the best of times: kids see them as a bit of a play about; there are so many things to go wrong software-wise; kids have hugely different levels of competence; the internet is a huge distraction; explainind things takes forever; there is a good chance that any piece of hardware will fail. These are all the more difficult when you don't have a clear lesson plan and have never used the room before. Add to this the fact that the computers are all running Windows in Japanese, and we need to type in English and we have serious issues.
Using the computers today it felt like I was trying to teach kids how to write a Shakespearian sonnett while simultaneously explaining the concepts of 'writing' and 'pencil' to a group of gibbons.
I'm just really annoyed that this keeps going wrong. I really want to sort this out and I could if I had any control over it. I'm not sure if the constant cock-ups are just a Japanese way of saying 'I don't like your email idea', or just examples of stupidity. The head of English seemed genuinely excited by the idea of an email exchange but things seem to being slowly slipping away. Today's lesson would have been OK if I had a data projector that worked and somewhere to save the kids work. It would have been OK if I had someone who could translate what I was saying to the kids. I have a feeling that the hour's work (a full 2 lines of text in some cases...) may have vanished into the abyss.
Add that to the fact that nobody seems to want to tell me what's going on and I have just recieved a team-teaching lesson plan for some point today (time unknown) that I am expected to follow. It's written in Japanese. EVERYTHING IS WRITTEN IN JAPANESE!!!
I DON'T SPEAK JAPANESE!!! I CAN'T READ JAPANESE!!!!!
Grrrrrr.......
Ahem. I am learning, and I am getting better at it, but my job is supposed to be for someone who doesn't speak Japanese and yet it appears to be completely necessary to do the job properly. The lesson plan was written, obviously, by an English teacher, one who knows I don't speak the language and yet still gives me a set of written instructions that might as well be a piece of mud for all the information I can get from it.
Rant over, sorry if the emails take too long Gemma, I am trying.


Proper blog soon.

April O'Neil

Mario Kart, Flowers, Boredom and Lunch. Read on.

It is the start of a new school year. People have gone, to be replaced by new people. My two-week holiday was drawing to a close and, enticed by the prospect of a big lunch, I went to meet Kamisu’s newest recruits. Down in Hasaki, Stephen’s replacement, Josh, was already settled, having moved just a few miles down the road, from Kamisu.

I met up with Kumi-san (who you will remember from way back when) and went for a drive. Jim was going to meet his ‘new’ schools, but not really. Jim had already been an ALT here, and was married to a Japanese woman, he was just coming back. After Jim had done his school run, Mary, a New Zealander (too many little lamb jokes) from Thailand. In what I can only describe as cheating, Mary has already studied Japanese and can speak it quite well.

The school run reminded me of my own sweaty day back in August when I met all my teachers along with Kumi-san. How we move on. We moved on from the school run to the promised Big Lunch and met the last of the new/non-new people, David. David is British and therefore talks properly and can spell.

Following this was a buffet extravaganza in Kamisu, then on to K’s Denki for some of the best coffee in Japan. The guy that makes the coffee is like a machine, a friendly, coffee-making machine.

I managed to do Sakura viewing properly twice, too. Once was on a pleasant evening and involved booze and the other was on a gorgeous day and featured a walk around a big old lake and a slightly perplexed Joe trying to work out the rules of American football while playing against Japanese children. The daytime sakura-fest was in the company of a lovely Japanese family, and my favourite moment was when I realised the father of the family had gone for a ‘little lie down’ in the car after too much afternoon sake.

From April

School has been a bit of a boredom fest, as classes didn’t start until Thursday. There were two opening ceremonies on Monday, as the 1st graders came in the afternoon. I only fell asleep once. The highlight of the ceremony was the exit, partly because this meant that the whole thing was over, bust mostly because there was a brass-band rendition of ‘Layla’. Clapton gold.

Boredom fest came to a close on Friday with the absolute pinnacle of useless meetings.
I sat through the entire meeting, which one Japanese teacher described as “just bullshit anway” apart from the part where I had to get up and say hello and give a little bow. The meeting was entirely in Japanese, people were actually sleeping in the audience and at one point a teacher took to the stage and read out a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet detailing this year's budget that everyone had been given already. Come back, Flintshire NQT meetings, all is forgiven. The SEN guy talking about the numbers of children with each ‘special need’ was riveting compared to this meeting. I didn’t even have Claire to play Squares with!

Aside from that, I taught some kids outside of school (they were lovely) in an enterprise to fund Mario Kart Wii which is a fantastic game. As a Mario Kart veteran, I am impressed that it seems to take the good points from each game with none of the negatives. It really is awesome. Even the potentially stupid ‘trick’ system works well. If anyone has a copy, my friend code is 5241-2022-3745, if you leave your code as a comment, I will do my best to add you. While I’m at it, my wii code is 6965 9901 2335 0687 and my Smash Bros.Brawl code is 4725 7286 9758. Let me know which code you are adding. My Xbox live ID is CooperSensei. My ham-fisted attempts to install the Mario Kart Channel have so far been unsuccessful, mainly because all the menus are in Japanese.
I've been a bit homesick this month, but it comes and goes. As well as my wonderful friends and family I have been really missing cold Devon custard in a tin. I am fairly sure I haven't eaten it for years, but absence does make the heart grow fonder. I have eaten some good old Virginia face-fodder courtesy of Melanie Trichel at a house warming breakfast for Josh and I can report back that it was damn good.
We climbed a big wooden thing and I took this photo.

Adios!

Facts

***Ducks are the funniest animals

***The thing on the end of a shoelace is called an aglet. I always thought they were called Flugel binders, curse you, Gaz Wynne!

***Brine is salt water with more than 50 parts per thousand. Saline has 35-50, and water with between 0.5 and 35 parts per thousand of salt is called brackish water. Less than that and it's fresh water