One last post before China, just laid out all my clothes….starting to put them in a bag. Halfway through the Lonely Planet, i’m taking notes on it. Anyway, just uploaded some Hanami pictures from the castle in Aizu Wakamatsu, I always forget the name of it, like Tsurajo or something. Check them out. Only took 18 pictures as we promptly got drunk cuz it was raining.
That’s all I got, stressing alot less about China.
B
April is the start of the school year in Japan. So, just like every other occassion there are ceremonies upon ceremonies for the new students, for the new teachers, for the new students to meet the other students, and for all the different clubs to be introduced. This is a compilation of all of those, except the new teachers’ one, cuz that was BORING!
Enjoy.
That’s it for now, China in 7!!
First I want to say that I am NOT GOOD at picking interesting titles for blogs. I feel like I should come up with something that is going to come out of the story or something else as a title. But, I never can. Hence, this is called work. I feel like I really haven’t chronicled how work has gone at all. That’s probably because work has become more of a “business as usual” kinda thing. But, about the blog in general, let’s be fair, it has contained very little over the past few months other than a short update about snowboarding and some youtube links. Anyway, I figured I’d give a rough run down of work.
So, to make this easier I will be using nicknames just cuz, hey it’s easier and this is how I refer to them with my friends anyway. I can’t remember the last thing I said about work, so, I’m just going to start from Shimizu-sensei. I definitely put something down here about her being sick, I think. Anyway, she’s been gone since about October or so. Her nickname is sicky supervisor, cuz she’s had some problems and each semester we’re told that she’ll be gone for another semester due to illness. I highly doubt she’ll be back before I leave. Anyway, when sicky was given to me as my supervisor, switching me from Ito sensei, shitty supervisor, (the first one that sucked, hence the name) I was also told that Chiba-sensei (Awesome super) would be my secondary super. So, when sicky left, awesome took on the full responsibility of me. At first it was a bit weird, just cuz the English teachers are primarily women and believe it or not I had just kind of got used to talking to women. This is not a sexist thing or whatever, but to be fair, it is different. And it’s not exactly like I can say, hey, you catch that sumo match the other night? Moving on, I did put up a short vid of my bonenkai (end of the year drinking party), oh check this out 簿年会 that’s bonenkai, I think. I installed typing Japanese on my computer, pretty rockin’ eh. 日本語がじょうずじゃない。 I’m not good at Japanese. Um, problem is that a lot of the kanji I don’t know, so it’s a crap shoot when trying to pick it. LOL. Anyway, at the bonenkai after a few drinks, Awesome super told me that it was actually his 40th birthday. We ended up at a snack bar tossing back drinks and talking about you know, random stuff. He told me about his wife and his family, etc etc. It was a great time and we got destroyed. First time I’ve ever drank with a supervisor. After that we kinda became buddies. He’s into skiing so we talk about good places to go, where the powder is, you know random office chit chat or whatever the equivalent is in Japan . What also helped is that, he seems to be, u know, one of the boys. So, finally I was kind of accepted by all the other teachers. He became like my gateway into the boys club. So since December there have been something like 6 enkais (drinking parties). For the first time ever, I’ve been going to the ni-jikai (2nd party, or after party) and sometimes to the san-jikai (3rd party). Classes have been pretty regular, and I’m definitely getting better at this, it’s easy as pie to teach a class, come up with lessons etc. I had never really realized how much the people at work matter when it comes to enjoying your job. Because my Japanese gets better when I’m drunk, or at least I believe it gets better, so does the English of the teachers around me. I’ve actually had full out conversations with a plethora of teachers. There is even one math teacher, who’s younger than I am that I have become friends with, his English isn’t very good, and neither is my Japanese, but the fact that we’re so close in age, helps us past that. I call him ototo (音と, guessing at the kanji) which means younger brother. Even after my last enkai, he came out and played pool with Steve, Alex, Katie, Mo and I, which for a non English speaker is pretty huge. Alex was an angry drunk, so it wasn’t as cool as I thought it was going to be, but it was alright. Mo’s come along to one of my san-jikais and met most of the teachers, who at that stage are like the coolest people ever.
Oh, and I partially owe my recent successes with my fellow teachers to the one weird weird math teacher. Not young cool math teacher, but older, weirder math teacher. At one of the after parties one night, all of a sudden, he was like rubbing my shoulders and my back….um, ok weird, but I was like, alright, you’re Japanese and drunk, it’s all good. This is what they do; the other night I had a yakuza guy sit down behind me and rub my leg, he was drunk as hell too. Anyway, the dude, starts calling me senpai (um, like one’s superior or mentor) over and over and over again while rubbing my back. I managed to get away from him a few times, but the other teachers find this absolutely riveting! Great! He even grabbed my ass a few times! Seriously!! But due to this sensation, I now have a little joke with most of the teachers that were there and they joke around about it. I know you might be thinking, Burento, they’re laughing at you. This may be the case, but for the most part, we’re laughing at the weird dude, cuz wtf that’s just weird. So, now I have like a little crew of people not afraid to sit near me in assemblies and joke around with. It’s kinda weird being in graduation ceremonies, being a teacher and sitting around cracking jokes and holding back laughter. Might not be the most professional, but for the most part, they start it.
As well, because of the fact that in Spring a lot of teachers rotate around to different schools we got a large influx of new teachers. I don’t mean, like new to the school but new in general. These kids are fresh off the college boat and most are like 22 or 23. One kid could slide into the back of a classroom with a uniform on and I wouldn’t even have the slightest clue he wasn’t a student. I now, actually kind of have rank on some people. That doesn’t mean that I won’t be last on the enkai guest list anymore, but it does mean that I’m kind of viewed by other teachers as part of the team. It’s wicked. So, I tend to thoroughly enjoy work now.
Even during spring break, which just ended today, I had an awesome time. At an enkai I brought up to awesome super that it was ridiculous for me to be sitting at work doing nothing, when I could be doing a plethora of other things. Shitty and sicky would have immediately been like, well your contract states…blah blah. Whereas Awesome super was like, ya that doesn’t make sense. You know what, on days you don’t have classes, mail my phone to say you’re leaving but leave whenever. I generally wait till at least noon. But it made my spring break that much better, just cuz I wasn’t sitting at my desk day in day out, waiting to go home while doing nothing. At least I got to go out and do stuff while the weather started to get warmer. Fricken wicked! The only difficulty with this is that shitty super sits beside me, between myself and awesome, so to avoid the stink eye and the possibility of her telling on me, I still had to be sneaky about the whole thing.
But, all of this has just recently changed, k, not all of it, just the super part. April, is Japan ’s version of September. Or spring break equates to summer break back home. The school year ends, graduations, new kids come in etc. (hopefully I’ll have finished the vid I took over the multiple “new kids coming to higashi (東)” ceremonies before I post this and can put it up, along with the huge fight that I video taped….ooooo). So, we had desk moving in which my desk was moved up with the 2nd grade teachers. Um, say what? Mad score, for as far as I know, it has never ever been moved from the first year teachers row, see how accepted I am? Do ya see it? So, now I sit beside awesome super, which is wicked. Down side, Awesome was appointed as head of the English dept. Know what that means? New supervisor. So I am currently on my 4th supervisor, in not even 2 years, but techinically I’m on my 4th, 5th, and 6th supervisors all at the same time. How’s that possible? Well, they assigned me 3 supervisors. Um WHAT? Why would they do that? It doesn’t make any sense. So, new supervisor, Nezu sensei, (I can’t decide if I want to call him tiny or small supervior, so I may alternate to feel them out) is actually mo’s old supervisor’s husband. Weird eh? Mo also got a new super. So, tiny dancer is my new MAIN supervisor. His back ups being some old brand new teacher that I can’t remember his name for the life of me, he told me to call him Hiro though (his first name). Who is old and new and his English, well, I haven’t really heard it. I shook his hand and that was about it. My 3rd supervisor is a teacher I get along with really well, so I’m stoked about that, but she’s 3rd in line, so I’ll probably never bother her for anything. Even when Awesome super was my secondary, I barely ever talked to him. So, tiny dancer, seems pretty apathetic to um, just about everything to do with me. It’s taken me a week to set up taking vacation days to china (I leave next Friday) and he hasn’t even actually booked them yet. I ask him every day, and he uhh, doesn’t care. This is one of the main things with JET, who your super is and how well you get along with them totally determines how many classes you have and just how easily your existence is at the office and in general. I have pretty much never talked to Tiny. At one of the first enkais I went to I remember trying to talk to him in Japanese, cuz to be honest I didn’t even think he was at our enkai, I thought he was just from another party in the building, then all of a sudden he ripped some English at me. I replied with, holy crap your English is awesome, he was then like, I’m an English teacher. Oh. I think that was probably the last conversation I had with him, until the other day when he asked me what days I go to visit schools. He u know, didn’t rock up and say, oh, by the way, most amazingest ALT in the history of ALTs, I have the honour of planning your schedule and helping you with whatever you desire. May I offer my services at anytime from here on out? No no, just walked up and said, what days do u go to adachi (安達) and matsuko (…no clue for kanji)? I said Tuesday and Friday, he said, ok, and walked away. There was no, I’m your supervisor or hey, just so you know, I’m your supervisor. Even awesomo super (I think I like the ring to awesomo super, but spell check keeps changing it) was weirded out after the switch and was avoiding me like an ex lover or something. I’ve talked to him since then and we’re all good now, but it was awkward for awhile, it was like he had betrayed me or something. LOL.
So that’s where I’m at as far as now. I’m at Adachi today for the first time in a month or 2 and I have my first classes since the break. I don’t think I’ll have classes at Higashi this week or maybe for a little while. I’m ok with that cuz I’m going to try to ease back into it. But I imagine I’m in for a bit of a battle when it comes time to actually get some classes again.
In other news, China , on April 25th. We’re flying into Shanghai on the Friday night, then the next morning we’re flying to Beijing for 5 days. Then to Xi’an on May 1st and we fly from there to Shanghai on May 3rd. We’ll be coming back on the 6th. So it’ll be a whirlwind tour but I’m pretty stoked. Tried to book internal flights the other day and now I have to fax a photocopy of my passport, credit card and some documents so that they can verify who I am. Weird, but, it’s China , so anything goes. I plan on eating as many bugs as I possibly can. YES!! Um, hopefully I finish the 2 vids that I have on the go and they are posted below this. Enjoy. I’ll put up another entry soon enough, it’ll be a tell all exclusive about my adventures in China .
Here’s a random vid of what happened when we went to hanami.
Peace
B
