I'd Like That in a Giant American, Please

I realized on my way home today that I'm finally starting to get used to the sizes here. It's a stereotype, but it really is true that everything here is just plain smaller. Or maybe, living here, I should put it the other way: small is normal.

My apartment, which in its entirety is half the size of my bedroom back home or possibly the same as a rich person's closet, is called a "mansion."

I refuse to take a picture of the trash heap it is now, so let's refer back to this picture!

Yes, that still really is the whole thing. The only thing that's bigger now is the TV.

Not just the housing -- at 5'3", I'm used to being short, but here I'm at worst normal-sized. At one of my schools, I tower over my supervisor like a Yeti. The baachan (grandmas) who pass me in the street frequently come no higher than my waist. I feel like a mediocre Gulliver.

And it's everywhere: the cars are small, the food is small (although thank God for that, with how much fried gunk there is here), etc. My kids' voice boxes are small -- some of the girls sound like whistles when they talk. My kitchen is small enough that cooking a whole chicken is an impossible feat, or would be if I could find one.

At first, despite all my experience here, I was kind of startled by the size of everything. And I was horrified by the apartment with its tiny kitchen, tiny fridge, tiny bathroom, the couch so small it has no legs. I've been talking about moving for months. But now it's growing on me, like a fungus, or Stockholm syndrome.

Now, when I walk home, I think how huge the houses along the way are, even though they're certainly not any bigger than the houses back home. Smaller by far than the house I lived in before I came here. Admittedly, that one could comfortably house five people, but so do some of these.

At this rate, when I go home, I'm going to feel like an ant. My room at home will feel like two apartments worth of space. Normal houses will look like castles and palaces. My old co-ed fraternity house, which we called The Barn, will look like a full-on working farm. And the ex-boyfriend-I-regret-dumping's mansion* will look like...

...Well, not a mansion, obviously. Because that's where I live.

Of course, if I feel like a giant, I can't imagine how people who are actually normal-sized feel. Do you think there's height-ism in this country? I haven't really seen any yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's there, lurking under the radar, beneath the xenophobia and sort of general cultural blindness.*** It would certainly be a refreshing change of pace.

I might even join in, if only because I think it would be fun to say: "No, it's okay. Some of my best friends are tall."
---

*No, seriously.**
**No, seriously.
***Not that I'm saying we're any better, as a country.

Life in a Sub-Tropical-ish Climate

Now, I'm sure this isn't unique to Beppu.

But I can safely say that this is the only place I've ever lived where I've been able to see both this:

You possibly can't tell because of the terrible photography, but this is snow on Mt. Tsurumi.

A slightly different, yet equally terrible, angle.

 And this:

Freaking palm trees!

...during the same walk to the same school on the same day.

Weird.

It's like that all over the place. Only maybe a third of the trees here are deciduous, so totally barren sticks are standing in the middle of lush, full greenery in the middle of December. It's very jarring to someone who's used to seasons that look more like seasons.

PS: Some bad stuff happened this week, so I took some crummy photos to take my mind off of it. Nothing life-altering (I hope, I should say, since it's not over yet), and I'm not going to talk about it here beyond that, but if you have a free moment, think some good thoughts at me and mi familia, okay?

Happy Chanukah!

I realize this is a few days in, but Happy Chanukah, readers!

In the absence of an actual menorah, this is what I've been doing at night:

The weird black smudges aren't dirt or anything, they're wax.

I actually feel way more Jewish than usual out here, if that's something you can say about yourself. I guess I'm used to being surrounded by people like me, and now that I'm not (there are, as far as I know, three of us in the prefecture), I'm clinging to things a little harder than I normally would.

Which is why I am incredibly excited about my upcoming Chanukah class next week. I'll let you all know how it goes.

In the meantime:



PS: Tomorrow is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test! For which I have been studying my butt off, and which I will fail spectacularly anyway. Good luck to everyone else who's suffering through it tomorrow!

Thoroughly Fukuoka'ed (Part 2)

Today, the thrilling conclusion of my weekend tale!

I realize that yesterday I said things only got worse after I wound up in Bumsville, Kyushu, and that "worse" is a subjective thing. Some people might actually say things objectively got a lot better! After all, I discovered that there was not only a hotel near the Bumsville station, but also one last train heading back to Fukuoka. It wasn't my original plan, but at least I could go back to the city, spend time with my pals, and head back in the morning. Or, I could stay in Bumsville and take the train in the morning.

And so, my world was nice for about two seconds.

After a couple of phone calls to verify A: if I should indeed go back, B: if there was still a hotel room for me in Fukuoka, and C: where the hell it was (or so I thought), I hopped on the late train and went back to the city. Before anything else, though, there was another round of problem-solving to get through. After all, I had this sweet ticket that I'd already paid for twice and hadn't even actually used. I had to make sure I could use it again to get home in the morning, nu? So I went to the counter, where the exact same guy who had stamped my ticket less than an hour ago was sitting.

"Hi, so, I sort of made a mistake and got on the wrong train," I explain. "Can I use this ticket tomorow instead?"

He stares at me blankly. I explain again. Does this sound familiar? He asks me, "So... you didn't use the ticket?"

I'm a pretty darn polite person in Japanese. It was a sign of things to come that instead of the usual smiling explanation, all I could think to do was snap, "I'm here, aren't I?" But hey, it worked.

I was kind of starving at that point, but it was after midnight and the stores were all closed. I grabbed a quick conbini snack while shopping for overnight supplies, then hopped in a taxi.
Cabs here work a little differently than what I'm used to. In New York, I can say "25th and 3rd" and expect a driver to know what I mean. Here, it's more like, "I'm looking for Tiny Hotel A, it's near Bigger Hotel B, in this vague area, do you know it?" Which is what I said to this guy, who had no idea what I was talking about. In this situation, my usual plan is to either give directions if I know them, or find a cabbie who knows where I want to go. But my buddy on Saturday night would not have it! He checked his list of area hotels (and checked it twice), and then made a great big show of going to every other cab driver and asking if they knew Hotel B. At this point, I was already obviously in a bad mood, and while I can't accurately type tone of voice, believe me when I tell you that this was all happening in as passive-aggressive a manner as possible. But, every time I tried to get out of the taxi, he would turn to me and say, "Oh, he doesn't know either."

I call my friend for more specific directions. My driver's response is to call his dispatch and ask for directions -- why he did not do this in the first damn place, you will have to ask him. I actually physically tore his head off when this was all over, but it's rolling along the streets in Fukuoka somewhere, I'm sure you can find it. The dispatch gives him exactly the same directions I did, but of course, I'm a dumbass foreigner with dumbass foreign friends who can't be expected to know anything.

(Actually, this is true, because both sets of directions turned out to be wrong, but that will come back to bite me in the ass in a moment.)

So finally, we're going along. Normally I have a nice relationship with drivers, and usually wind up chatting with them, but at this point, all I want is to get to the hotel, eat something, and go to sleep. Plus, I already despise this man, and he clearly thinks I'm an idiot.

Oh, and not only that. Because as we pull out, he says, in his very best so-you-definitely-seem-like-a-gaijin-prostitute voice, "So, like, sorry, but is this place a love hotel or something?"

At this point, I lost it. I've never yelled at anyone in Japanese before, but I'd had a long day, I was exhausted and angry, and I did not want to chitchat about my secret life trawling for sex with some passive-aggressive jerk. I sounded like an angry schoolgirl from some anime, with the few random curses I know thrown in for good measure.

At this, the guy backed off for a while, muttering, "I didn't mean it like that" (which he did). Then, he pulls up to Hotel B. "Okay, here we are." Hotel A is nowhere in sight. Huh? I point this out, and he asks me what on earth I'm talking about.  "What Hotel A?"

I run over our previous, pre-hooker conversation in my head. "I'm looking for Hotel A, it's near Hotel B," I'd said about a thousand times. Clearly, he'd forgotten the first part, but instead, he starts whining, "You never said anything about Hotel A! How was I supposed to know about Hotel A?" But he takes the are-you-freaking-kidding-me look on my face to heart and calls dispatch again.

Now, keep in mind, the entire conversation thus far has been in Japanese. The only English I've spoken at all has been on the phone with my friend. And, he knows I can hear him on the radio, because I pointed out to him that the directions they gave him were the same as mine. Undeterred by basic logic or manners, he gripes into the radio, "I don't know what's going on with her, she kept saying Hotel B over and over again, now she wants somewhere else, can you believe it?"

Nice.

At this point, I try to call my friends again, but my phone dies. I have the name of Hotel A and its general area and that's it. Cabbie snipes at me, "Boy, it would have been nice if you'd gotten the phone number, huh?"

Here, I pretty much lose it again. We're driving in circles, totally lost, and my fuse has completely checked out. So now we're driving in circles, lost, and yelling at each other. Finally, I tell him to just let me the hell off at Hotel B and I'll find the place myself. I shove the door closed, Buddy drives off, and...

...now I am alone in Fukuoka with no phone and no idea where I am.

But wait, what sound through yonder misery breaks?

At exactly this point, when I am truly about to break down and throw myself into traffic, or at least the nearest bed I can find, my friend shows up like Joan of Arc or some other awesome heroic figurina. In my memory, when this happened, horns were playing, the clouds parted, and the moonlight shone down upon her in radiant beams. I practically started crying.

"Please just tell me where this motherfucking hotel is," I say, like a perfect damsel in distress.

And that's how I finally got to sleep.

I will give my cabbie credit for two things: one, he turned the meter off when we started running around in circles; and two, any New York cabbie would have kicked me out of the car long, long ago. So good for him! The jackass.

Oh, and I will also say this. No matter how bad it was, I got a lovely reminder that it could always be worse. As we drove around Fukuoka, I saw a store with papered windows, clearly closed forever, and ironically titled Best Luck.

The next day, as my friends helped me recover, I found out that nearly everyone else had also been miserable the night before. Look, folks -- I know a lot of people like it, but I can only now help but wonder if Fukuoka is cursed.

PS: Also worse luck: Tokyo and the Ogasawara Islands got hit by a giant earthquake today! Yikes. I've heard everyone is okay, but nonetheless, let's all send good vibes towards Kanto.

Problem Solving; Or, How I Got Fukuoka'ed, Part 1

My triumphant return! ...is not so triumphant.

You see, I've realized that my greatest mode of communication is complaining about things. This is not because I'm a negative person; actually, I consider myself a great optimist, albeit a slightly cynical one. It's just that where I grew up, and with my friends, bitching is the way we bond. I met my best friend because of a mutual activity, and I like to think we would have become friends no matter what, but the truth is, we initially bonded because a bunch of ridiculous stuff happened and we griped to each other about it.

Which is all to say that I've been told I can be a little negative, and that I should probably not be negative about, say, my job, on my public blog. Fair enough! I say. Except that unfortunately, that means basically no content, because the rest of my life is fairly dull.

Except now, I've found something to complain about that has nothing to do with work, and everything to do with stupidity. Some of it is other people's. A lot of it is mine.

I apologize in advance for there being no pictures. I haven't yet become the sort of person who thinks, Wow, this is a shitty, ridiculous situation I'm in. I must photo-document it! Although it's only a matter of time, I'm sure.

This is the story of this weekend.

*****

The plan was pretty simple: go to Fukuoka on Saturday, watch the Grand Sumo Tournament, party until forever, go home on Sunday. But even before it started, things began to go wrong. I started feeling sick last week and wasn't sleeping well. I spent basically all weekend partying last weekend and was pretty much partied out. I didn't get the ticket I wanted for the sumo. Et cetera.

Then the Moaning Pigeons kicked off the mass ruination.

I promise I will explain the Moaning Pigeons in an upcoming entry, but for now all you need to know is that they live on my balcony and they absolutely suck. For some reason, I couldn't fall asleep till 4 AM on Friday night. '"It's okay," I thought. "I'll sleep till 10:30, leave at 11:30, nap on the train, and be at sumo by 2." But the Moaning Pigeons would not have this! No, they decided that a 7:30 wakeup call was far more appropriate. I tried to chase them off and go back to sleep, but when the Moaning Pigeons are determined, they'll do anything to get their own way. After an hour of effort, I gave up and went about getting dressed and so on. Then, all ready to go way too early, I sat down on my bed, yawned, put on an episode of The Office...

...and woke up at 1 PM.

Whoops.

Sumo lasts from 8:30 AM to 6 PM, so I realized that at least I would still have time to catch the last bunch of matches. Even better, the good wrestlers are all last, so even if I got there late, I'd get to see the really good ones. Cool! I got in at 4:30 and watched some high-quality sumo for an hour and a half, a sumo expert friend-of-a-friend giving me helpful running commentary the whole time.

Why, that doesn't sound bad at all! you say. But oh! there is so much more.

By the end of the tournament, I was still feeling fairly rotten, and my roommates were all talking about drinking all night and going wild. I really just wanted to lie in bed and read the internet, so I decided I'd just go to dinner and a nightcap and then catch the last train home at 11. This all worked out fine, except that A: it started to pour all over me and my nice fabric flats and my lack of umbrella, leaving me soaked; and B: I spent a little too much time on the nightcap and wound up scrambling for a taxi to the train station. "Step on it, please, I'm about to miss my train," I begged the cabbie. Apparently the one nice cabbie in Fukuoka, the guy drove like a rock star and I got there with 15 minutes to spare. Yes! I stroll in, get my ticket, and go to glance at the souvenirs for a minute before the train comes.

Somewhere between the ticket booth and the souvenir stand, I lose my ticket.

I check my pockets. I check my bag. No ticket. I check the floor. No ticket. Nothing.

Augh.

Here, we get to why I'm calling this entry "problem solving:" because as it turns out, the Fukuoka transit personnel have absolutely no ability to do it. I run back to the ticket booth and tell the guy what happened. He stares at me blankly. I tell him again and ask what I should do. He stares at me blankly, then asks if my ticket fell out of my pocket. Yes, yes, and I point out that the only train out of the city is about to leave without me and my 5000 yen ticket so can he please tell me what I should do? He makes a quiet phone call to someone. I have maybe two minutes. I make various gestures which I guess to him looked like American monkey antics. He gets off the phone.

"Um, do you think you could just buy another one?" he asks.

I do not have time to argue the point, and I just got paid last week, so I throw a surplus of money at him, grab a new ticket, and run.

I know my train is leaving at 10:52. This is what I know. I also know I have less than a minute before it arrives. I glance up at the departure board, see "DEPARTING AT 10:52" on the first track I see, and take off like a rocket. I make it just in time! The crowd cheers! I make myself comfortable in a lovely quiet car and the train takes leaves, heading off in...

...the exact opposite direction of my town.

I told you this was a story about my stupidity.

I'm not sure, at first. I recognize the name of the destination they announce, but I can't remember where that is. "That's south of here, right? They must just be taking the long way around." And then, as we start to pass towns I don't recognize: "Well, there are a few train routes through Kyushu, I'm just on a different one from what I took to get here... right?"

Nuh-uh.

Finally, just as I'm about to go find him, dread welling in my throat, the conductor comes to me. He takes one look at my ticket and says: "Uh... where are you going?"

"Beppu," I say in a small, I-know-I'm-a-freaking-moron voice.

He also stares at me blankly. Then, he very politely and Japaneseishly kicks me off the train.

"Is there even a train going back to Fukuoka this late?" I ask as we pull up to a stop in the middle of nowhere.

"I'm not sure," he admits. "Probably not."

"So... what you're saying is that I'm stuck in a random, unfamiliar town, in the middle of the night, with no idea where I am and no way of getting back."

He shrugs. Apparently, this is not as big a problem for Japanese conductors as it is for me.

And so there I am, at midnight, alone on the platform, bag in hand. The town's name is unfamiliar and it appears to be at least as inaka as my neighborhood, because there are no lights on anywhere. My phone has one bar of battery left.

And you know what's funny? It got worse from there.

Week(s) of Fail

Things got away from me for a little while, so I'm about a week behind with this blog right now. Well, I realize I haven't posted in approximately ten years, but that's more because I've had nothing in particular to talk about. I actually three entries for the last couple of weeks, but have not had a chance to post them! So, well, bear with me and pretend that today's entry is coming from a week and change ago.

---

So I'm calling it. This week (that week) is (was--you know, like I said, let's just pretend this is really happening now) the Week of Fail. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I've just been full of ridiculous, embarrassing, pointless errors all week. These are what I call "that happened" moments, and what my friend M-sensei calls "I did that" moments.

Some of these have been pretty minor, like spilling a container of bacon grease on the stove, or nearly missing the JLPT signup deadline by like, a minute (thank God for nice people on that one). And then...

And then.

And then there was Sports Day.

This week, one of my schools had their Sports Day. This isn't what you'd expect from an American perspective. We're not running around playing volleyball or anything. No, actually, it's more like a good hometown county fair, which you know I've seen a lot of in New York City, with three-legged races and tug-of-war and the like.

This is how seriously they take it, though.

From the moment they announced this event, I thought, "Well, here's a whole well of potential embarrassment for my fat, red-faced, clumsy-ass self." But the spirit of Japanese schools is all about "Do Your Best!" so I went for it. And things were going pretty okay, at first, even if I lost 3/4 of the events I was in.

Things were going pretty okay until someone decided that it would be hilarious to pair me up with the kindly, middle-aged, insanely dignified school principal in a race that involved running while squeezing a balloon against another person's back.

Really not joking on that one. Really.

I'm sure you can imagine what happened next. If you can't, don't worry, I'm imagining it enough for both of us. I'll be replaying it on the inside of my eyelids for months.

He blew up the balloon.

We turned back-to-back.

We started running.

We were out of sync, so he grabbed my arm.

I fell.

And I took him down like a linebacker.

When I realized neither of us were dead, I helped him up, gave him a gun (being a New Yorker and all), and asked him to shoot me in the face. He decided to go for the more humiliating option of being super nice about it and apologizing for making me worry.

Then I decided to quit, cry myself to sleep, wake up, and hurl myself bodily into the sun. Not because I was still embarrassed, but because I just don't know if I can live in a country where I practically dislocate someone's everything and they apologize to me.



This was the first result when I googled "shame." I like it.

 No, okay, what actually happened was that I moaned and groaned for a while, no one actually seemed to care, we finished the day, and my team won! Hooray.

Nonetheless, That Happened, I Did That, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be cringing over it for a good long while. But, on the bright side, I've got an amazing trip to Tokyo with M-sensei to look forward to! And that, I hope, will help kickstart my new "be less of an embarrassing person" campaign. Wish me luck!

Managing Expectations

"God, give me the strength to accept that which I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference," quoted the keynote speaker at our orientation last month. This is, of course, the Serenity Prayer, AKA the AA Prayer, but he thought--and I can't help but totally, 100%, completely, entirely agree--that it applies pretty well to the teaching abroad situation.

There are a lot of expectations to deal with here: the expectations you have of your job; of your house; of Japan; the expectations your job has of you. Even little things, like, "I didn't expect to run into face-hugger-sized spiders, but there's one in that tree there!"*

Lately, I've been feeling a wall between my expectations, my job's expectations, and reality: I want to do X and they want me to do Y. I thought I would be Z-ing, but instead I A and B. Or I ask to C, and they look at me like I'm crazy. The latest discussion is over vacation time, a fair chunk of which is coming up soon--but for various reasons, none of it on the days it should be. So they want me to take my holiday on this day, I want to take it on this day, etc.**

It's all working out in the end, happily. They want me to come to such-and-such, and I find a way to do that. I want to go away on so-and-so, and I find a way to do that, too. It's all pretty okay, actually. A little frustrating as a process, but I think the solution will turn out to be fine.

So why do I mention this? What's the point?

Well:

This week, some fellow ALTs and I taught a special class at another school on World Peace. One of our questions for the students was: "What makes you feel peace the most in your daily life?" And without fail, in every group, at least two people out of eight said it was talking with their friends.

"You're right," I told them. "When I'm feeling bad, I call my best friend, and that makes me feel peaceful again." Which is both unoriginal and the sign of a really awesome friend, which I am lucky to have***. Hi, Nagano!

So my point, Future JET, is this: for Pete's sake, make sure you have a decent support system here. You never know when you're going to need it, even over the smallest things. You need someone you can just say, "Face-hugging spider! Face-hugging spider!*" to every so often.

Oh, and make friends with your OL. She'll give you pudding. For real.

---

*Incidentally, this is the reason behind that failed photo essay I never posted: the zoom on my camera is terrible, and I couldn't bring myself to get close enough to the spiders to get decent pictures of them.

**Amazingly, this negotiation, or whatever, has included me asking if I can work on a day they were planning for me not to. If you told me I'd ever be asking to work...)

**Even if, sort of ironically, the entire vacation negotiation is happening because of said friend. So I get frustrated because it's hard to visit her, and then I get relief by talking to her about being frustrated that I'm having trouble visiting her. God bless the Internet, anyway.

PS: 9/11

Addendum: Of course, today was the anniversary of 9/11, if you'd somehow managed to not be bombarded with that. But I spend enough time trying to avoid talking about that in my daily life, so I think, perhaps, not today either.

Except to say: A continued RIP to everyone who lost their lives, and Shana Tovah to everyone who survived. Be well for another year.

The city that definitely sleeps

One thing I realized on my way home tonight, having just left a perfectly nice party in mid-par, is that I've actually never lived in a place where I had to leave at the end of the night or risk not being able to go home at all.

Hell, I've never really lived in a place where "end of the night" was a mandatory thing.

I mean, I spent all of college either living in a Greek house, or being good enough friends with the members to sleep over. Plus, well, living on a campus less than a mile from end to end. And New York-- was New York. There have been plenty of times I've stayed over at a friend's or taken a taxi, but not because I had no other choice. The subways ran. I just wasn't always on them.

So really, this whole "well if I don't go home at 11 PM I don't go home at all" thing is totally new to me, and really confusing to deal with.

Sure, I bet it could be a convenient exit strategy. "It's not that I'm not enjoying marathon strip Risk, I just really need to be on that train." But all too often, I've wound up leaving things I was perfectly well enjoying, so I can see I'm going to need to make a contingency plan.


Relatedly, have a picture of the hotbed of urban activity that is Beppu at night.

99% of those lights still on are pachinko parlors.

So I guess there's nothing else for me to do but go to bed now, or have another beer and rewatch last week's (amazing) Mad Men. Either way, goodnight, Internet!

Anecdotes:

Bits and pieces from this week:

***

One of my schools has a festival coming up. I've been asked to sing a solo.

In "We Are The World."

My Life Is Awesome.

***

Continuing the "Gaijinesse is destined for illness" thread, today I met a very sweet girl. The least shy person I've met here, by far. She played with my phone, held her phone up to my ear so I could hear her Just Dance ringtone, messed around with my papers, hung out with me in the cafeteria... and then hours later casually mentioned, "Oh, my throat hurts, So and So thinks I have a cold."

My Life is Less Awesome.

(To be fair to her, I felt like hell all day. If I wasn't sick before, though, I bet I am now. Of course, if she wasn't sick before, she probably is now. Sorry!)

***

I met a guy who seriously was dressed, during a normal day, like he was about to be on the cover of GQ. He wasn't particularly bad looking from the neck up -- but from the neck down, he looked like one of the guys from Inception. Gaijinesse Approved!

***

I keep being told that the transportation here is, like, the most reliable in the world. I was willing to accept that, while my bus is always late, it is so reliably late that I could probably set my watch by its lateness. Until it just didn't show up at all today.

This is the second time in a month that's happened, too. The first time, it was the train back from Yufuin. Oita public transportation, you are letting me down.

***

I saw my vice-principal Moonwalk today.

Really, My Life Is Awesome.

God has a sense of humor...

...and sometimes, it's downright mean.

We went to Sashiu Beach on Saturday, which was awesome. (Picture to come -- although one thing I'll maybe never get over is the way Japan likes to ruin its pristine beach views with ugly risers and breakers. Of course, I say this as an American who's never had to deal with a tsunami.) I swam, grilled some grillin', got some sun, all good.

Afterwards, we went and saw the Stone Buddhas in Usuki, and when we were trying to decide whether or not to pray at the statues, I realized that for the first time in ages -- if not forever -- I couldn't think of anything I really needed or wanted at that moment. "You know," I said, "life is being pretty good to me right now. I'm doing okay."

I did, actually, wind up praying for the patience to actually work on studying Japanese. But usually I'm all about a chance to talk to God/gods/what have you and try to bargain the miseries of my life away. Saturday? No miseries. Doing good.

So then, of course, I got sick.

Which is really nothing new for me, to be fair. I get sick at the drop of a hat. A baby in NICU has a better immune system than I do. The Bubble Boy probably beats me out. But except for my regular wrangle with feminine woes, I'd been doing surprisingly well here. Until now.

Of course, going to the doctor here is one of the few things I'm still seriously afraid of. This isn't a dig on Japanese medicine: I despise going to the doctor back home, too, even though I typically need to at least once a month. Combine my normal hatred of doctors with a language barrier and neurotic Jewish hypochondria and you get some real anxiety brewing. Which, let me tell you, is a great state of mind for A) fighting illness and B) teaching classes.

Anyway, I'm trying to avoid the possibility of having to go to the doctor for as long as possible. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this just goes away. Wish me luck! This has already been enough of a learning experience for me -- just yesterday, I got to learn how to take time off for wanting to roll over and die. That's enough for one week, I think.

Apologies

Whoops! Since it's 11:15 and I'm about to crash, I think it's safe to say that I lied about the photo essay going up today. Expect it Tuesday or Wednesday-ish, instead.

Tomorrow, we have another orientation in Oita City. When you've been in the country for a month, the word "orientation" seems oddly inapplicable, but hey -- I like going to Oita, so why not?

Trauma Tourism

This is a diversion from the usual blog topic I typically plan to write about, but I feel the need to vent about something that just happened, and something that`s happened to me before. This isn`t only a Japan thing, but it seems to happen more regularly in Japan than in other places, and I`m not sure if it`s a culture shock thing or a `You Know What, This Ain`t Cool` thing.

I`m talking about 9/11. Which, of course, was not cool.

Actually, I`m talking about the weird obsession people in Japan seem to have with asking me about 9/11 as soon as they find out I`m from New York. It`s only happened twice so far this time, but the last time I was in Japan it happened frequently, and I expect the subject to come up plenty of times while I`m here.

This is usually how the conversation goes:

Japanese person: You`re from New York. Were you there on 9/11?
Me: Yes, I lived close by.
Japanese person: Wow!! Tell me EVERYTHING.
Me: Um... It was pretty rough...
Japanese person: Did you see it were you scared how much did you see what happened did anyone die it must have been really scary wow that`s amazing we saw it on TV it was so shocking was it shocking???

This is what I think of as trauma tourism, and I feel like it`s self-evident that it bothers the hell out of me. I don`t walk up to other people and say, `Hello, almost-stranger, let`s talk about one of the most horrible moments in my life, in depth! And sometimes you`ll laugh while I`m talking about it!` (Really, they do this. `Oh my God, you thought you and everyone you love were going to die, that`s hilarious.`)

I`m not sure why 9/11 gets a free pass on this, really. If you found out someone was raped or their parents were murdered, you wouldn`t go over to them and demand explicit details on their experience and exclaim over them like a circus act. I mean, maybe you would, but I hope not. I think the impression is that because it was a `global event,` a shared experience, it`s something people feel more involved in, even thousands of miles away. Or maybe it`s just that it`s something important about New York, something they want to use to make a connection with me. Really, I`d rather they use Times Square or pigeons or something.

You`d think they`d realize, nine years later, that it`s not really something anyone who was actually there wants to keep talking about. But hell--if the yokels in Montana and Ohio and Tennessee and the jerks in our own government still keep trying to exploit 9/11 for their own purposes, why not the Japanese, too?

I guess I`m not any angrier about trauma tourism than I am about the mosque protesters or anything Rudy Giuliani has ever said. I`m just not looking forward to dealing with it again. And again. And again.

But maybe I`ll just start lying about it. `Did I say New York? No, no, I meant Newark. Actually, I meant Nome, Alaska. Must have misspoken.`

Blerg. A weary Gaijinesse, signing out.

By the way

By the way, here is what I think of as an interesting thing: the picture below, the one of all us ALTs, was framed and given as a prize to 50 of the students who solved the mystery correctly. When they told me this, my jaded American self snorted internally. `What teenager would want a picture of their camp counselors? One they`re not even in?`

To be fair to me, I`m from New York. You give a sixteen year old something like that there and they`ll ask you to your face if you`re fucking kidding.

But here? The kids went nuts for them! The ones who lost actually got upset that they didn`t get a sweet gaijin pic. Then they took out their cell phones and took as many as they possibly could themselves. I alone must have posed for two dozen, and I`m not a dreamy foreign boy. I can`t even count how many our more kakkoii* ALTs must have stood through.

Kids! Go figure.

*(`Cool,` but typically used to mean a hot guy.)

Yufuin!

I've just recovered from being Internetless for the last three days. Normally, that kind of thing would be pretty much fatal for someone like me, but I managed to survive because I was at Yufuin.

What is Yufuin? Well, it's a very pretty tourist town in the Oita mountains.

Yes, that's my finger in the picture. I'm a brilliant camerawoman.

But I mean something a little different. As it turns out, being a prefectural ALT (hired by the prefecture rather than a city or school) has its perks. One of these is getting to skip the sitting at your desk / doing nothing for three days while you go to work at the Yufuin English Summer Seminar for High School Students. This is pretty much what it sounds like: a three-day intensive English summer camp for high schoolers, mainly first- and second-year students.

Faces may have been changed to protect the innocent.

Working there is hard work, but a hell of a lot more fun than anything I'd be doing at school at the same time.

There are two kinds of ALTs working at the seminar: group leaders and instructors. Because it's my first year, I was a group leader, which was basically being a counselor/den mother to ten girls and one boy.

They gave me this at the end. "Love Samurai" was the team name I gave them. Heartfelt sob!

Older ALTs are more typically instructors—they run “classes” (which included a Jeopardy-style quiz show and a lesson on how to dance to Poker Face), but also are in charge of the camp theme. This year, it was Casino Murder Mystery, so all the instructors got to put on a show, and then interact with the students as their characters to help them SOLVE THE CASE DUN DUN DUN.

…

Now if you know me, you know this already, and if you don't, you will soon: I love cheesy stuff like this. My big goal for Beppu right now is going to Hit Parade, the 50's style bar where everyone dresses like greasers. If I could afford to live my life in costume, I probably would. Needless to say, I now have an extra incentive to stay on JET next year. Getting paid to dress up and talk to people as a hilarious character? If I liked kids more, I'd probably be working at Disney right now. So yes, please.

The schedule is pretty much packed right from 6:30 AM to midnight, but I still had a blast. And I say that as someone who values her sleep. Yes, there were some frustrating moments—having eleven teenagers stare blankly at me while I spent five minutes trying to explain the word “purse” stands out in my mind—but I genuinely feel like it was worth it in the end.

Seriously. Look at that board they gave me. How freaking cute is that?

Plus, it's a great way to get to know your fellow ALTs!

Anyway, now that that's over, I'm back at school, and I have another mystery to solve: there are like sixty desks in the teacher's room and I only bought a 24-pack of omiyage*! DUN DUN DUN. What will our intrepid heroine do? Tune in next time to find out!

*(For the non-initiate or non-Japanophile: omiyage means, essentially, souvenir, and is a treat you bring back for your colleagues after going on a trip somewhere, usually some regional specialty cookie or something like that. For the future JET: technically, this is the correct definition of omiyage, not “bring stuff from home to get in good with your teachers.” But you can do that too, if you want. I still haven't given mine out and now I feel like an idiot, so if you do bring stuff, pick your time better than I did.)

It begins!

I know what you're going to say:

"Oh, look. Another JET blog."

Unfortunately, I have no excuses. This is just another JET blog. I am just another JET.

On the other hand, I'm just another JET here:

Welcome to Beppu City, Oita Prefecture! Apparently referred to as the armpit of Japan, although I have no idea why. I mean, sure, it's hot, sweaty, a little smelly, and occasionally even hairy, but it's also one of the most freaking beautiful places ever.

Witness.

That's the view from my apartment. Compare your life to mine and weep profusely.

Of course, the trade-off is that this is my apartment... all two feet of it:

It's slightly bigger than a two bedroom in Manhattan!

Anyway, I'm doing this blog for three reasons:

1) I'm a narcissist

2) People asked me to (really!)

But mostly 3) When I was accepted to JET, and found out where I'd be living, I scoured the internet for information on Beppu and Oita, and had a hard time finding much. In fact, the best resource I found was a JET's blog from Nakatsu. So I'm hoping that while this will (theoretically) be entertaining and (hopefully) enjoyable for the rest of the internet, I'm really doing this for you. Yes, you, you future Beppu JET, desperately seeking something relevant about your new home. I sincerely hope it helps.

That being the case, I don't really want to talk about Orientation, since that's sort of Jet Prep 101, but for the sake of friends and family I'll do a super-fast rundown: swanky hotel --

Seriously! ... What an awful picture!

 

--and lots of boring talks. Future JET, people on the forums will tell you to skip panels and take naps. This is a good idea. They will tell you to ignore the fact that "Prefecture Night" officially no longer exists and go out with your prefecture people, if not also many other of your awesome new ALT friends. This is also a good idea. I went out twice, and although I was super-tired... well, I've been super-tired since I got here. It's called jet lag and being ridiculously busy. It happens! I'm glad I made friends while being tired. That's a good change for me.

See, Tokyo loves us!

So after Tokyo Orientation, we got dumped into the middle of absolute chaos and somehow made it to Kyushu, and now...

 Well, that's what the next year (at least) is all about. I hope we both enjoy it, reader.