Karaoke, Bike-Riding, and Other Discoveries - September 2011

By a strange coincidence, September 11, 2011 was the anniversary of the two most personally significant news events of my life.  Firstly, it was the ten-year anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks in New York City.  While the attacks and their aftermath didn’t affect my life directly, their global ramifications were so sweeping that I can’t help but think of them as among the most important events I’ve lived through.  From the first time I heard of them (one week into grade thirteen, walking into my law classroom and seeing an image of smoking towers on the television screen), I knew that I was witnessing a major story that would change the world as we knew it.  Ten years later the world is still dealing with the fallout from that day.

The other event had much less global impact but affected me much more directly.  September 11 was also the six-month anniversary of what has become known as the Great East Japan Earthquake.  I’ve already written at great length about that experience.  Six months on you can barely see any damage from the earthquake itself, but the clean-up from the tsunami feels like a never-ending task.  The story has faded from the international news and the aftershocks have more or less ceased (the current level of seismic activity is pretty much what it was this time last year), but there is still a massive amount of rebuilding to be done and the newspapers continue to print daily updates on the numbers of dead and missing.

Oddly I didn’t do anything to commemorate either of those events.  I suspect that had I been in North America the World Trade Center attacks would have been spotlighted, but they received much less attention here in Japan.  Nor was I aware of any special events to commemorate the earthquake.  So the date passed mostly unhallowed by me, though not unnoticed.

Classes resumed at the end of August.  I’ve made a new English board for the teacher profiles, and I’ve been adding them at a rate of one per day.  That should get me through the whole staff in just over a month.  Back in the classroom, I’ve noticed that my first-year teacher hasn’t been bringing me to class very often.  To some extent I don’t mind very much, since I much prefer teaching the higher grades, but I do worry that the students are missing out.  On the plus side, from what I’ve seen so far, the first-year teacher is pretty good.  He has a good relationship with his students, and they in turn seem more relaxed and comfortable using English than the other classes I work with.  Still, at the least I’m losing some important bonding time with them.

School Festival was at the beginning of the month.  My contribution to it largely consisted of spending a lot of time in the accountant’s office cutting half-inch pieces of origami paper.  The students were all making mosaics, and, hey, those little coloured squares have to come from somewhere.  But the event also gave me my first opportunity to do something with the letters I’d received from the JET Programme.  I made a big bulletin-board display about them.  It included all the letters, an explanation in Japanese and English, definitions of difficult words, a map showing the town the letters came from, and even some Wordle word art.  I doubt many of the students got to look at it, but I hope that the parents who came saw it and got something out of it.

After the festival we had an after-party, and after that a group of us went out to karaoke together.  It was only my second time at karaoke since coming to Japan, and my first time going with my co-workers.  Clearly I was at a bit of a disadvantage because I couldn’t sing along with any of the Japanese songs, but on the plus side I was invited to join in every time a teacher chose an English song to sing.  So I lent my questionable singing talent and unquestionable English expertise to such songs as “This Love”, “Without You”, and “Bring It All Back”.  When it was my turn to pick I chose “Shine” by Collective Soul, which I think I did a decent job on.  I also invited one of the male teachers to a duet of “All I Wanna Do” by Sheryl Crow, which ended up largely turning into a solo for me.  In retrospect I chose a pretty difficult song, but we still had fun with it.  Just before I left, the art teacher led us all in singing the Totoro theme, the one Japanese song I could at least join in on the chorus of.  It was a really good time; I wish we did that sort of thing more often.  At $30 each I could see it being an expensive hobby, though.

The biggest priority for me at the start of the new term was to get my kids ready for the speech competition.  I didn’t actually see as much of them as I’d hoped to over the summer holiday, but when they came back to school it was clear they’d put a lot of work into their speeches.  One of them wrote her speech; the other did a recitation of a short story.  I wasn’t a fan of the story she chose, but her delivery was excellent, so I think it was a good choice for her.  As last year, I much preferred listening to the students’ own speeches than to the recitations.  I was surprised (though in retrospect I don’t know why) by how many students talked about the earthquake this year.  Even speeches ostensibly about other things worked their way around to it eventually, as though the students felt obliged to mention it.  I can see that it was an important event in the lives of the students, but after about a dozen speeches the theme got old, and every time I heard the words, “On March 11, Japan suffered a terrible earthquake,” I found myself thinking: Yeah, I know.  We all know.  We were there.  I was very glad that my student was one of the very few who didn’t mention it at all.  Unfortunately, she didn’t win anything.  The student who did the recitation got third prize, not enough to advance to the prefectural level.  So that’s it for speech competitions this year.

There’s been a surprising development with my putative swing dancing club: one day, the mother of one of my students called the school and asked if she might join.  Since I barely had any students anyway I figured there was no harm in letting her come for what turned out to be a private lesson.  She’s now become my one regular club member, and has even brought friends along.  At first I was reluctant to hold the class only for adults; after all, the whole idea of the club was to do something fun with the students, not their parents.  But the thing is, I enjoy it; it’s the only opportunity I ever have to dance, and I’ve realised I’m not too bad at the teaching, either.  So I suppose I’ll keep it going for as long as I can with whoever wants to come.

The ALT fellowship group hasn’t met again, but I did learn from some of the members about a church they go to down town, and I decided one Sunday to check it out.  Unlike my church, the congregation is at least half made up of English-speaking foreigners, including ALTs and other English teachers from a private school.  I really enjoyed going to church in an anglophone-friendly environment, and I’d like to go back there, but at the same time I like the church that I have.  I’ll probably keep going to my regular church, but I may also visit the new one from time to time.

Another thing that came out of the fellowship group was a suggestion by one of the ALTs that we go up to Ishinomaki for the weekend to do some volunteer work.  As it turned out, we weren’t able to get organised for a weekend trip, so instead a couple of us joined a local group and spent a day volunteering in one of Sendai’s coastal neighbourhoods.  We met at a church downtown and rode bicycles out to the work location.  It was my first time riding a bicycle in years.  I know they say you never forget how, but there’s a big gap between being able to stay upright on a bike and actually being able to ride it well.  On the plus side, I really liked the bikes we had.  They were quite comfortable and easy to ride, and came with a motor attached.  I’d never ridden a bike with a motor before.  I set mine to “echo” mode, which means that the motor only kicks in when the rider is actually pedalling.

I was pretty unsteady at first, weaving back and forth in my attempts to remain stable.  One of my pet peeves since getting here has been the fact that cyclists ride on the sidewalk rather than the street – especially annoying if you live in a neighbourhood like mine where the “sidewalk” is a two-foot wide covered gutter – but I was grateful for it now, because I would have gotten myself killed riding in traffic.  I steadied out a bit after a while, and as the muscle memory started to return I discovered that I actually enjoyed it.  I did reasonably well for speed; I kept the motor off most of the time, and only turned it on for help going uphill.  I still had wobbly moments, though, and found starting and stopping difficult.  Shortly before we reached our destination – and just as I started to think I was getting the hang of it – some of the other volunteers pulled up in a van and said they’d drive me the rest of the way.  And so my cycling experiment was brought to a sudden end.

As I settle into my second year in Japan, I’ve made a surprising and gratifying discovery: I speak Japanese!  Not well, admittedly.  Or fluently.  Or intelligently.  Actually, I probably have the grammatical level of a two-year-old, and a vocabulary somewhat worse than that.  But I have reached the point where I can at least carry on a low-level conversation with a Japanese person.  And since that was one of my goals when I arrived here, I feel pretty good about that.  I’m still hopeless at a lot of things, but now, where I used to just shake my head and smile helplessly, I ask people to repeat things and reach for my dictionary, and sometimes I can even figure out what they’re saying!

The point has been brought home to me by my recent interactions with other teachers.  When doing the staff interviews I noticed that it was much easier this time around.  The Japanese phrases I’d had to memorise last year now came much more naturally to me, and I understood the responses better.  I also noticed improvement at the School Festival after-party.  Whereas last year I was seated between two of the English-speaking teachers and spent most of my time talking to them, this year I was happy to sit at a table with mostly Japanese speakers and muddle through conversation as best I could.  I was quite successful, too, managing lengthy conversations with the teachers to my left and right, neither of whom spoke more than a few words of English.  I may not have been the most scintillating conversationalist there (Am I ever?) but I could hold my own, and I felt good about that.

This achievement is especially important to me because this month my Japanese language classes came to an end.  There aren’t any higher-level courses offered in the evenings, so this will probably be the end of my formal Japanese study.  I’m going to look into getting a tutor, though.  While I get plenty of conversation practice at school and also outside of school (Special thanks goes to my tea lady for that!), I still have almost no reading ability.  I’d like to work on improving that for a while.

In the news this month, the U.S. has repealed its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military.  Prior to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, gays were forbidden from serving in the military, period.  The policy liberalised the army somewhat, allowing gays to serve but only if they weren’t open about their sexuality.  Repealing it means that now gays and bisexuals can serve in the military and do so openly.  That sounds like progress to me.

Books I’ve read this month:

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury – Loosely connected series of short stories chronicling the settlement of Mars.  More intelligent than some sci-fi stories I’ve read.  The story called “Usher II” is especially good fun, if not great science fiction.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling – In the words of Xander Harris, “Stop this crazy whirligig of fun; I’m dizzy!”  Instalment five in the Harry Potter series is a downer from start to finish – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  I like the fact that Rowling has started subverting some of her more obnoxious tropes.  And this book has the coolest villain so far; in fact, I think Dolores Umbridge is now my favourite character of the series!  Actually, I liked pretty much all of this book, except for the romantic sub-plot.  That made my skin crawl.  I’m still not sure how I feel about the ending.  I’d say it was good if I thought Harry was going to grow from the experience, but so far the only result of bad things happening to Harry seems to be to turn him into more of a jerk.  Which brings me to a chronic problem I seem to be having with this series: I don’t much like Harry Potter.  I don’t mean I dislike him, just that I don’t find him especially engaging.  I can only hope that he matures a bit before the end of the series.  And also that things lighten up at some point!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling – Thankfully this book does indeed hearken back a bit to the lighter tone of the earlier instalments – at least until the last few chapters.  Unfortunately, though the story is interesting, it isn’t resolved as satisfyingly as those of the other books.  Instead, it mostly serves as setup for the final novel.  As for the ending, I’m in denial about that.  Rowling’s done one of the things I was most hoping she wouldn’t do.  I’m still holding out hope that it will come out alright in the last book, but it’s hard to see how.

…And the Living’s Easy - August 2011

My second year in Japan begins, as did my first, with a month of summer holiday, except that this time there is no orientation, just a holiday.  The heat is oppressive and there’s a steady drone from the cicadas.  Every so often a lone insect will start up a solo nearby.  Though you might not think it, a hundred cicadas going at once are fairly innocuous, but a single one just outside your window will kick up the most ungodly racket – especially if it’s doing it at five in the morning.  The spiders are also busy.  I see way more spiders here in Japan than I do back home.  Not indoors, fortunately, but outside they’re ubiquitous.  They’re much bigger than what I’m used to, and they’re constantly spinning their webs: in trees, against lamp posts, across sidewalks, and over my front door.  I’m always cautious when entering or exiting my flat, in case some spider decides to drop on my head.

I’m really glad I decided to stay.  Now that I’m settled and not suffering culture shock any more, I feel I’m much better able to appreciate summer in Japan.  The trees are green; the rice paddies are yellow; my students wave at me when they see me on the street.  It’s things like that that could make you think life is worth living, and other such delusional notions.

Since it’s the summer holiday now, work is slow and boring, but I’ve been able to break up my weeks with a few excursions.  In the first week of the month, a group from Taiwan came to visit my church.  They consisted of an American missionary who’s been living in Taiwan and a half-dozen American-born Chinese teenagers.  They came to volunteer in Ishinomaki, one of the coastal towns that had been hard-hit by the tsunami.  The group stayed at the church and drove up to the town every day, along with anyone else who wanted to volunteer.  Since I had plenty of free time and hadn’t been volunteering for a while, I figured it was a perfect opportunity for me.  Even better, my school let me take “volunteer leave”, meaning that I didn’t have to use up any of my annual vacation days on the trip.

I actually only went on two days, Wednesday and Thursday.  It made a nice change to get away from my desk and do some physical labour.  It also made a really nice change to be hanging out with other Anglophones, even if they were teenagers.  On both days I helped work in a field that various people had apparently been working on for some weeks!  The field had been right next to a cell phone factory, and the tsunami had washed all sorts of cell phone parts and other débris into it.  Our task was to sift through it and remove all the parts and other garbage we could find.

It was reasonably mindless and straightforward work, though unexpectedly taxing.  On the first day I neglected to warm up before hand, and in the evening discovered that my arm muscles ached quite painfully.  The next day I was much more conscientious about stretching.  Most of the junk we recovered was fairly uninteresting, but we did find a teapot and a couple of cups that may or may not have been salvageable.  On the second day I also hit on a mother-load of sludge (earth mixed with petrol), which all had to be dug up and carted away.  Clearly the person who owned the field needed a lot of help if he was to get it in shape for planting again.

In the afternoon of the first day the person who’d brought me took me for a drive around the neighbourhood.  Although lots of people had been working on it for months, there was still a stunning amount of visible damage.  Some houses clearly hadn’t been touched since the tsunami.  There were still cars and the occasional boat piled up in strange places.  It was a sobering reminder of how many people have been affected by the disaster.

In the middle of the month I took my three days of summer vacation and used them to make a second trip to Tokyo.   This time I decided to save money by taking the bus.  The shinkansen may only take a couple of hours, but it costs a hundred dollars each way, whereas you can get a return bus ticket for about seventy.  I got the bus on Wednesday evening after work.  The trip took five hours, about the same as a bus ride between Ottawa and Toronto, and got me into Tokyo around 11:00 p.m.  I checked into the same hostel I’d stayed at in June, having liked it and seeing no reason to search for a different one.

The next morning I met up with my acquaintance from Tokyo, the one who had come to visit me at Christmas.  He took me to O-Daiba, an island in Tokyo Bay.  First we went to the Museum of Maritime Science.  It was bigger than Osaka’s Maritime Museum, and rather entertainingly shaped like a giant ship, but I wasn’t quite as impressed with it somehow.  My favourite exhibit was the ships in the bay next to the museum, which one could walk around and have a look at.

Next we went to the “Miraikan”, Japan’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation.  This was evidently the place to see the latest in Japan’s famed advanced technology.  We arrived just at the end of the robot show, where Honda’s ASIMO was on display.  The rest of the museum dealt largely with science and technology in general, but there was an area specifically devoted to the latest technological advancements, and it was pretty interesting, even if I didn’t fully understand everything in it.

We ended up at Decks Tokyo Beach, where we had dinner and window shopped a bit.  We bought ramune, a classic Japanese soft drink that I’d never tried before, and sat outside drinking it and looking out at Tokyo bay.  From where we were we could see the Rainbow Bridge leading back to the mainland and a replica Statue of Liberty adorning the shoreline.  That’s the second replica Statue of Liberty I’ve seen here in Japan; the other was the one in Ishinomaki.  I wonder what the fascination is.

On Friday we went to the Science Museum, where I annoyed my companion by looking at everything and being fascinated by it.  The first section we visited was about the history of Japan and Japanese science, and from there we moved on to prehistoric mammals and hominids.  I could probably have stayed there all day, but we decided to take a break for lunch, after which we went to the Edo-Tokyo Museum.  This museum deals with Tokyo history.  Unlike the Tokyo National Museum, which consists mostly of artefacts in glass cases, this museum included reconstructed houses and neighbourhoods, allowing one to walk through historical Tokyo and see its evolution up to the present day.

My Tokyo buddy left me on my own the next day, but I had unexpected company.  The ALT I know from Fukushima happened to be in the city, along with her uncle, who was visiting her from Canada.  She invited me to come along, so I spent the day hanging out with the two of them.  We walked around the Imperial Palace grounds, then went to Ikebukuro for dinner and some shopping.  We went up to the top of the Sunshine 60 building, and I saw Tokyo by night for only the second time since coming to Japan.  It’s quite a sight.  Admittedly, I don’t have many other night time city views to compare it to, but I found it breathtaking on both occasions.  It felt like looking down on a galaxy, the lights spread out in all directions like a sea of stars.  If you ever go to Tokyo, make a point of seeing it like that at least once.

We got together again the next day for some browsing in the Senso-ji market, then lunch at the okonomiyaki place my sister and I had gone to.  I left them in the afternoon to meet my Japanese acquaintance.  He took me to see a temple and a church, then we wandered around west Shinjuku, where I took pictures of all the buildings that had fascinated me on my arrival in Japan.  Then he helped me fulfil one of my chief shopping goals: to purchase a Japanese copy of The Hobbit.  I collect the book in different languages, my sister and I buying copies when we visit foreign countries.  The Japanese edition brings the number of translations I own to five, the others being French, German, Italian, and traditional Chinese.  The book is far to difficult for me to read and understand, but being so familiar with it I can still pick out passages I like and see how they appear in translation.

Though the heat was brutal, I enjoyed my second trip to Tokyo.  There’s a lot to see there, and much of it I still haven’t gotten to yet.  The subway system continued to frustrate me, but I’m beginning to understand it at least a bit better.  One complicating factor, I’ve realised, and the thing that gave me such a headache early on, is that there are very few hub stations.  Tokyo Metro alone has over a dozen lines, but even at the bigger stations no more than three of four will converge.  The one exception is Shinjuku, where everything converges, making it so huge it’s really best avoided if possible.  The city makes up for this by being quite thoroughly – even redundantly – interconnected.  No matter where you’re starting from, you can get to pretty much any place in downtown in just two train rides – though remarkably few in just one.  And in place of one big station, the busier areas are often serviced by multiple small station.  Case in point: if you want to go to Ginza, there are about five subway lines that will take you straight there.  These lines go to three different stations that, at their most proximate exits, are barely two blocks from each other.  As I mentioned in my last Tokyo post, I’ve had to do more walking than that within a station!  The prices are reasonable, as long as you stay within the Tokyo Metro system.  Unfortunately the most convenient line in the city, the Yamanote Line, is part of the JR system, which one pays separately for.

Back at school, I’ve kept myself from going crazy by making a lot of work for myself.  One thing I’ve been working on is a project I started last summer but never completed.  I went around and interviewed each of the teachers with the intention of posting mini-profiles of them on my English board.  Unfortunately once the school year started most of the teachers were busy, and I never got around to finishing the interviews.  Since everyone has a lot of free time these days, I’ve started them up again.  The interviews are really simple, partly because my Japanese is so limited, and partly because I want the results to be easy enough for the students to understand.  I’ll try to start posting them next month.

I got some sad news about one of my students.  Apparently a fifth-year girl at one of my elementary schools was killed in a car accident.  I know the class she was in; I’ve visited it many times.  I even saw a picture of her, but I still couldn’t place her or recall any memory attached to her.  It’s sad though, for her family and her classmates.  Oddly, I didn’t get the news from my school, but from the pastor’s wife at my church.  I don’t know why the school wouldn’t tell me something like that.  Maybe they thought I wouldn’t know how to react – to be fair, they’d be right.  I feel as though I should say something to the class when I see them next.  But then, what would I say?  It would be awkward enough trying to express condolences in English; in Japanese I think I’d just fumble the whole thing hopelessly.  So maybe it’s better that I not say anything.

There seem to be a lot of festivals in Sendai during the summer, all of them involving fireworks.  I actually went out with my tea lady on three separate occasions to see them, which gave me an excuse to get some more use out of my new yukata.  There was also a big fireworks show in downtown Sendai that I’d missed last year but that I got to see this time around.  I’ve seen a lot of fireworks shows: in Hong Kong, in Vancouver, and in Ottawa.  But Japan can definitely hold its own in the fireworks department.

One of the other ALTs is trying to start up a prayer/fellowship group for some of the Christians here.  She held the first meeting at the end of the month.  It was nice to hang out with some of the ALTs in a different kind of context and to share fellowship with English-speaking Christians for a change.  I don’t know when the next meeting will be, but I hope it becomes a regular thing.

In the news this month, London has exploded in riots.  The United States is in a state of financial crisis and President Obama’s not having an easy time dealing with it.  Japan has a new prime minister.  His name is… hang on a second… Noda Yoshihiko.  I know I should take more of an interest, but given that Japan changes prime ministers as often as it changes calendars, it’s kind of a pain to keep up with them all.  The last P.M., Kan Naoto, was actually in office for over a year – since before I came to Japan.  I wonder if this one will still be in power when I leave, or if I’ll have to learn another name before I’m done here.

Finally, Jack Layton, leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, is dead.  It’s official: I hate 2011.  I was never exactly a fan of Jack Layton.  I’ve always found him a bit smug and obnoxious.  And I wouldn’t consider myself an N.D.P. supporter, any more than I’d align myself with any of Canada’s major parties.  But it’s still a sad loss.  The timing seems especially cruel.  He died less than four months after leading his party to its biggest victory ever, never getting a chance to assume his role as leader of the opposition, and leaving the party leaderless as it faces a whole set of new challenges.  Interestingly the other two major opposition parties are also going through leadership crises.  I guess the silver lining is that since our current government will probably be around for a while, they all have plenty of time to sort themselves out before the next election.

Movies I’ve seen this month:

Up – This movie has a fun premise (a grumpy old man uses helium balloons to turn his house into his own private zeppelin) and a heart-warming story (the relationship between said old man and a lonely young boy).  I liked the main characters and most of the supporting cast too.  But man alive does Disney need better villains!  (Three stars)

Books I’ve read this month:

A Walk In The Woods by Bill Bryson – My second Bill Bryson book, this one is set in his native U.S.A. and is about hiking the Appalachian trail.   It was nice to read a hiking book by someone who wasn’t an expert hiker – in other words, someone whose hiking experience would probably be similar to my own.  And I enjoyed the anecdotes with which Bryson supplements his story and the combination of awe, wonder, and horror with which he approaches the natural world.  As Dana Scully once said: “Respect Nature, ‘cause it has no respect for you.”

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling – It’s hard to say where the story is going for most of this book.  Most of it deals with a competition called the Triwizard Tournament – a frankly goofy-sounding event that Harry gets sucked into.  It all feels pretty inconsequential – until near the end when the plot suddenly takes a dramatic left-hand turn into Darker and Edgier territory.  Over all, I think Rowling handles this very well, even if it is necessary to follow it up with about a hundred pages of dénouement.   I do, however, wonder if the bad guys couldn’t have come up with simpler plan to achieve their evil ends.

Atsui desu ne!* - July 2011

Summer’s back and so is the heat.  I already discussed it in last summer’s post; suffice it to say it’s really hot here, as my teachers are fond of pointing out repeatedly.  One of them asked me if Canada gets this hot.  I told her that yes, on occasion, we get some pretty hot summer days, but that’s why July is summer vacation.  Here the teachers and students are forced to sweat it out till the end of the month.

At the end of June I agreed to go to another ALT’s school to help at his culture day.  Since it was so close to the beginning of July, I teamed up with another Canadian and we taught a lesson on Canada Day.  Our topic was food.  We taught the students the names of popular dishes and asked them to guess their countries of origin – because as everyone knows, we don’t have food in Canada; we just borrow everyone else’s.  I also talked a bit about Canada Day with my elementary school students, and handed out the Canadian flag stickers I’d gotten from my sister.  I realised it was my first ever Canada Day spent outside of the country, and I’m glad I got a chance to commemorate it even a little bit.  At church I was invited to talk about my favourite part of the summer and ended up going off into a long description of Canada Day and how I usually celebrate it.  One of the members said he’d never seen me get so animated about anything before!

At my own school, the students had their “Chorus Contest”, in which each class sings a set of songs and a prize is awarded to the best class in each grade.  The students spent the better part of the last couple of months rehearsing and preparing for the competition, though from my perspective it was just a chance to get out of school for a day and enjoy some music.  The highlight of the competition was actually a half-time show where the new English teacher played his guitar for us.  He’s really good!  It was unlike any guitar playing I’d ever seen before, and I sat mesmerised through the whole thing.

I’ve had some success recently introducing new ideas for activities into my classes.  I convinced the third-year teacher to let me do rebuses with the students, and despite the lack of language arts practice they usually get they handled them quite well.  I also filled up some of my free time making pronunciation trees for some of the minimal pairs Japanese speakers usually find difficult.  “R” vs “L”, “B” vs “V”, “A” vs “U”, “S” vs “Th”… the list is quite long, actually.  I’ve started using them in both my second- and third-year classes, and I think I’ve hit on the perfect activity to make me, the students, and the local teachers happy.  Pronunciation is something we can all agree is important; it’s practical in a really concrete way that’s easy for the teachers to understand; and it’s one of the elements of English that I, as a native speaker, am genuinely an expert on.  I’m probably going to make this activity a regular one throughout the rest of the year; we’ll see how many pairs I’m able to get through.

Another activity came about when my second-year teacher asked me to do a special lesson with one of her classes.  I was as thrilled as I always am to be suddenly tasked with doing an entire lesson on my own (which is to say, not at all), but upon checking out my favourite websites I came upon the brilliant idea of doing a MASH game with my students.  Do you remember MASH?  It’s a game I remember playing as a pre-adolescent, the point of which is to try and predict what kind of a future you will have: whom you will marry, where you will live, what kind of job you will have, etc.  I quickly realised the game would be a great opportunity to give the students a lot of speaking practice while hopefully having fun.  The demonstration took a long time, but once the students understood the activity, they basically just ran it themselves.  For the most part they looked like they enjoyed it, and the teacher decided to do it with her other three classes as well.

There’s one new activity idea that recently came to me all the way from Canada.  Back at the beginning of June I got an e-mail from someone in the JET Programme about a bunch of letters the Japanese Embassy in Canada had received.  The letters were from Canadian elementary school students expressing their condolences in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami.  The Embassy had apparently passed the letters on to the JET Programme, who in turn wondered if I would be interested in having some of them.  I was a bit hesitant to take them, given that few of my students had been seriously affected by the disaster, but I talked to my head teacher about it, and she seemed supportive of the idea, so eventually I accepted.

The letters didn’t arrive until the end of July, just before the start of summer vacation, so I haven’t had a chance to do anything with them yet.  I have, however, read them and shown them to my teachers.  They’re quite touching.  There are twelve in all, written by grade three and four students from a small town in eastern Ontario.  The language is simpler than an adult would use, but still much more natural – and therefore challenging – than most of the reading material my students work with, besides being full of spelling and grammatical errors.  I don’t know how optimistic I should be about getting my students to read and understand them, but the teachers seem to agree that I should at least try to share them.  That’ll be something to work on in the fall.

At the end of the month, my head teacher, who also teaches second-year English, came to me with the news that she was going to be giving a presentation on teaching practices.  As part of her brainstorming, she asked me what I thought of English education in Japan.

I was like, seriously?!

I stalled for a couple of minutes as I desperately tried to think of something diplomatic to say.  I mean, I doubted that, “I think English education in Japan is a joke, why do you ask?” would go over too well.  Eventually I hit on the idea of framing everything as a comparison between the Japanese method of teaching English and the Canadian method of teaching French.  I stressed repeatedly that second language education in Japan was very… different from what I had grown up with.  Not wrong… just… different.  I tried to avoid giving the impression that I thought everything about French education in Canada was perfect – I don’t!  Indeed, I might have enjoyed French a lot more if it had been more like English in Japan.  But the comparison gave me a chance to air a lot of my pet peeves: the use of Japanese by English teachers; the emphasis on rote memorisation; the lack of authentic speaking practice.  More than once I touched on the fact that the focus in Japan is mostly on passing exams, with very little emphasis placed on practical English skills.  She seemed to agree with me on the last point, and asked me for suggestions on how this could be improved.

I’m not very good at hedging, and I’m afraid that despite my best efforts I may have offended her.  I’m also afraid that I may have dug myself into a bit of a hole, because she probably thinks it’s my job to fix the problems I mentioned.  I kept trying to remind her that I’m not actually a trained teacher, and not in a position to say what would be best for the students.  After all, it’s very easy to find fault with someone else’s teaching style; it’s a lot harder to improve upon it.  And if the teachers here suffer from the disease of underestimating their students, I know I have the opposite problem.  I tend to make activities that are too challenging, forgetting what a struggle learning a foreign language can be.

She listened very politely and seemed to take most of my points well.  An idea I stressed a few times was that the students would learn more if the English teachers spoke English in class.  Interestingly, she suggested that her poor English skills were a barrier to doing this, and I found myself contradicting her.  Her English is pretty poor, but it’s adequate for the class she’s teaching.  The problem is that she doesn’t use it enough.  She has the same lack of self-confidence that plagues her students and prevents them from improving their speaking skills.

She latched onto the idea that students need more speaking practice, and actually made one suggestion I think has a lot of potential: every class, one student has to give a short speech about some topic.  I made the point that it could be a very short speech, as long as it got the students into the habit of talking about themselves in English.  We won’t be able to try out the idea till the resumption of classes in the fall, but I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes.

One other interesting thing happened at school.  My tea lady has adopted a baby sparrow.  Apparently it fell out of its nest and she brought it inside and put it in a box of paper shreds.  It’s currently living in a cage in our school office and I visit it sometimes to help feed it worms.  She’s named it Piko-chan.

It’s the end of the JET contract year, and we had a “Leavers Party” to see off the departing ALTs.  Most of the ALTs I know are coming back next year, including the one from Singapore, but the Australian one’s going home.  I’ll miss her.  I guess I’ll have to go to Australia some time to visit her!

The Singaporean ALT and I went to the park one evening to see the fireflies, which are supposed to be a famous summer attraction in Japan.  It was in fact my first time to see fireflies in action, and I have to admit they were very pretty to watch.

Although the aftershocks have gotten pretty infrequent and mild now, we actually had a big one at the beginning of the month.  It measured 7.0 on the Richter scale, making it our biggest event since I was shaken out of bed at the beginning of April.  Fortunately it didn’t do much damage or even disrupt life in Sendai significantly.  But here’s the amazing thing: I completely failed to notice it!  When people mentioned it to me afterwards, I had no idea what they were talking about.  Turns out I was walking to church when it struck, and I guess I was so focused on getting there in a hurry that I didn’t feel the earth move under my feet.  To be fair, earthquakes are less noticeable when you’re outside, but I still find that remarkable.

I got to celebrate my birthday a few different ways.  I went over to my tea lady’s house on Saturday and she had a little party for me and one of her nieces, whose birthday was around the same time.  I also went out to dinner with the Singaporean ALT, and got birthday cards and e-mails of well-wishes from my friends.  So over all it was a cheerful celebration away from home.

I also received one really nice gift, though not a birthday present exactly.  As an anniversary present to celebrate the fact that we’d both been in Japan for a year, my church gave me and the English teacher each our very own yukata!  A yukata is a light summer kimono.  I’d been wanting one for a while, and thinking that it would make a very good souvenir of my time in Japan.  And now I have one!  I was surprised and thrilled by my church’s generosity.  I mean, I can understand that they’d want to give a thank-you gift to the teacher who works there, but to give one to me too seems extravagant.  It’s quite nice, too, and fits me fairly well despite my uncommonly tall stature.

I got to wear the yukata that very day to a festival that was happening downtown.  It was actually a combination of several festivals; as part of the effort to improve post-earthquake morale, Sendai decided to host six festivals at the same time, one from each of the prefectures in Tohoku (north-eastern Japan).  I’ve had other opportunities to wear the yukata, too.  A lot of festivals take place over the summer, and my tea lady has taken me to see them with her family.

One other thing happened this month to mark the passage of my time in Japan: my watch battery died.  Which meant that I had to go and get it replaced.  And when I did, I found that, naturally enough, the people at the watch counter had set my watch to the correct local time.  Up to then, it had been fixed on Eastern Daylight Time, regardless of my location or the time of year.  I thought of setting it back, but since it had been set for me, and since I intended to stay in Japan for at least another year, I figured I might as well leave it there.  So now, after almost a year in Japan, I am at last functioning on Japanese time.

In the news this month, Japan won the Women’s World Cup in Germany.  Considering the rough times that Japan has been through recently, the victory has been something of a national morale-booster and a source of national pride.  In the United States, New York has legalised same-sex marriage.  And the world has a new country: South Sudan has seceded from the north to become its own sovereign state.

In grimmer news, the normally peaceful country of Norway suffered two coordinated terrorist attacks, one a car bombing, the other a shooting at a youth camp, that have left over seventy people dead.  Have I mentioned how much the news this year sucks?

Movies I’ve seen this month:

Super 8 – A sci-fi action-adventure told through the eyes of a group of adolescent filmmakers.  The film is almost worth watching for the kids, who are funny and engaging in a way that took me back to an early Spielberg movie.  Plus, it’s nice for a change to have teenaged characters actually played by teenaged actors.  The downside is that nothing else about the movie really works.  The story is confused, the ending doesn’t make sense, and the special effects threaten to overwhelm the film.  Oh, and cool though they may look on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, lens flares do not automatically make everything better.  (Two and a half stars)

Inception – I was really impressed with this movie, which is well worth all the hype it’s been getting.  I was expecting an action-packed special effects show, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s actually much more of an idea movie, as reminiscent of Solaris as it is of The Matrix.  The premise is fascinating, to a degree where I almost wish that there could be sequels or even a T.V. show based on it.  The story is basically that of a heist film, and is as fun as any other movie in that genre, with the twist that the fortress is someone’s mind, and the goal is to put something in rather than take it out.  Any ethical issues this presents are completely ignored by the characters, which is just as well, as there would be no way to justify them.  I’m not sure it all makes perfect sense; I have a suspicion that once I go back and re-watch it a few times I’ll start finding all sorts of plot holes.  But on first viewing it worked really well.  (Four stars)

Lilo & Stitch – A troubled orphan girl adopts a belligerent alien and teaches him the true meaning of family.  Quite unlike any other Disney movie, it’s set in the present, has protagonists with genuine flaws, and lacks a clear villain.  While these departures from the traditional formula could have made the movie weak, they actually create a fresh and interesting story that’s just a little bit gritty but still heart-warming.  I even liked the soundtrack, which might just turn me into an Elvis fan yet!  (Four stars)

Ratatouille – This Disney film was more disappointing.  The premise of the rat who becomes a master chef is cute, but the main characters were a little too annoying, and the plot took a few too many twists.  (Three stars)

Grave of the Fireflies – Tragic story of two young children struggling to survive in the decline of World War II.  It pulls on the heartstrings fairly unsubtly, and I couldn’t help wondering if it wasn’t over-doing it at times, but I’ve never had to live through wartime deprivation, so I probably shouldn’t judge.  (Three stars)

Books I’ve read this month:

The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis – Still slowly re-working my way through the Narnia books.  This one has a tighter story than its predecessor.  It also contains some of the more blatantly didactic passages of the series.  As a child I think I liked the book less for that, though as an adult I find the religious allegories interesting.  I do have to say that I’m uncomfortable with the ending, which has always struck me as strange and I still don’t understand.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling – Why did I ever think this book was badly written?  I guess it depends on what one’s comparing it to.  It’s not The Lord of the Rings, to be sure, but it’s not exactly Eragon either.  Reading it as an adult, obviously, I find the characters a little flat and the plot a little over-determined, but I’m sure it would make a perfectly enjoyable read for a child in the target demographic.  My only two major complaints are that the magic isn’t well explained, and the humour feels a trifle mean-spirited in places.

Shame by Salman Rushdie – Yet another abstract and satirical tale about the Indian subcontinent, this one focusing on Pakistan.  Unfortunately I don’t know much Pakistani history, and I think a lot of the allegory was lost on me for that reason.  It’s the kind of book that makes me wish I was back in school, because I’m sure it would be fascinating to deconstruct and discuss in a classroom context, but I found it a little hard to interpret on my own.  Vaguest of all for me was the title; the book is explicitly and self-referentially supposed to be about the damaging effects of shame, but I couldn’t see how that theme played out in the actual story.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling – The second book in the Harry Potter series, and probably one of the weaker ones.  One point against it is the introduction of Dobby, a character whose sole function is to annoy.  Another is its reliance on the adults being useless.  One sort of gets the impression that the story could have been wrapped up within the first six months if the kids had only discussed what they knew with one of the teachers.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling – My favourite of the Harry Potter books so far.  It’s considerably longer than its predecessors, with some interesting twists and a likeable new character in the person of Prof. Lupin.

* “Atsui desu ne!”: Japanese for “It’s hot, eh?”

Tokyo - June 2011

Back in May, my acquaintance from Fukushima called me up and asked if I would be interested in joining her and her friends on a weekend trip to Tokyo to see the stage production of The Lion King. I accepted, naïvely assuming that a weekend trip meant that I wouldn’t have to miss any work. As it turned out, that weekend happened to be a sports day, meaning that I was expected to be at school. On the bright side, my head teacher told me I was free to take a holiday on those days; it just meant using up two days of paid leave.

At the same time, my sister had floated the idea of coming to Japan to visit me. I was reluctant to encourage her, with the country recovering and aftershocks still a near-daily phenomenon. But she seemed to think it was safe enough, and with the situation improving weekly it was hard to contradict her. She’d mentioned June as a good time, and it struck me that if I was going to Tokyo anyway, it would be the perfect opportunity to meet up with her and have a proper Tokyo vacation.

So I settled on the following plan. I used up the last of my vacation days to take a full week off work. On Saturday I would go down to Tokyo with the other ALTs. Then on Sunday my sister would fly in and I would meet up with her. We’d spend a few days in the city before going back to Sendai together.

On Friday evening I went down to Fukushima by train and bus. The next morning we got the bullet train to Tokyo. The ALTs had booked us a room at an international hostel in Asakusa, in the north-eastern part of the city. The hostel was right next to Senso-ji Temple, which we had to walk through to get to the subway station, so that was one tourist attraction I saw quite a lot of.

After lunch and some window-shopping in Ikebukuro, we headed down to the theatre for the show. I’d seen The Lion King once before in Toronto, but this production had the added novelty of being in Japanese! My Japanese skills are evidently still really poor, because I understood almost nothing of what the characters were saying. On the other hand, I’d seen the movie so many times I knew pretty much all the dialogue anyway. The theatre wasn’t as big as the one in Toronto, but in spite of that they managed to put on a spectacular performance that was well-worth seeing.

The next day we checked out of our shared room and I checked into a private one. I killed time letting the Fukushima ALT show me Ueno Park and the Science Museum, then took the train down to the airport to collect my sister. We caught up a bit and she gave me the things I’d asked her to bring from Canada: Canada flag stickers (I thought I could use them for Canada Day), toothpaste (with fluoride!), and sunscreen (you don’t know how expensive it is here!) I expected her to have wicked jet lag but she manned-up remarkably well under the circumstances and we managed to make the most of our time together.

My sister had never been to Japan – or indeed Asia – before, so it fell to me to play tour guide. It was my first time in Tokyo and even after almost a year my Japanese was barely enough for the most basic conversation, but I was still the “expert”. I started by pulling out my Japanese guide book and noting some of the locations of interest I’d bookmarked. Then I turned to the subway map to see if I could figure out how to get us there.

If you’ve never been to Tokyo, the first thing you need to know about it is the metro system. It truly is a wonder. The only thing I know of that even compares to it is the London Underground. It’s not as though I’ve never lived in a city with an extensive railway system; it was my main mode of transportation in Hong Kong. But even for a city of seven million people, the Hong Kong MTR map is nothing like the bird’s nest that confronts the recent arrival to Tokyo. After a couple of minutes of staring at the map with the exact same puzzled expression on my face I realised I was still no closer to understanding it than when I’d started. I thought it would snap into place after a moment or two, but it obstinately remained a tangled mess, reminiscent of the wires inside some electronic device or Salman Rushdie’s Ocean of the Streams of Story.

It doesn’t help that when travelling around Tokyo you’re actually dealing with not one system, but several. The biggest is Tokyo Metro, but there are also lines run by the Japan Railway Company (JR), and other smaller companies. Transferring between these systems involves paying separately for each. And even when you stay within a system, transferring between lines can involve long walks, even leaving a station by one entrance and re-entering it by another. I’ve done a transfer that involved walking “500 m” (that’s right; half a kilometre) outside to get from one platform to another of what was nominally the same station!

The one piece of good news was that my Suica card would work for both the JR and Tokyo Metro systems. It’s the card I use to take the train in my own city, and after a false start trying to figure out day passes and such we decided the easiest thing would be for my sister to get one too.

On Monday we started back at Ueno Park. It’s a large public park in the northern part of the city, within walking distance of our hostel. It’s notable mostly for how big it is and how much it contains. Besides being a public green space it has several shrines, museums, a zoo, and other cultural centres. We couldn’t go to any of the museums, which are closed on Mondays, but we saw some of the larger shrines. Then we headed up to Koishikawa Korakuen, a garden in north-central Tokyo. It was quite lovely there, and though there weren’t as many flowers out as there would have been in the spring, we did get to see a lot of irises. After lunch we strolled south towards the Imperial Palace and actually made it all the way to Tokyo Station, where we got the train back to Asakusa.

On Tuesday we went back to the Imperial Palace, hoping this time to see it properly. Unfortunately the grounds are usually closed, so the only thing we were able to do was walk around the park and through the East Garden, which is the one section that is open to the public. We walked down to Ginza for lunch, where we found a ramen shop serving cheese ramen. That was… different. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Ginza. I was looking for a nice fan shop where I could buy my mom a souvenir, and eventually found one after stretching my Japanese skills asking several people for directions. We browsed for a bit, then picked up dinner at the local Mitsukoshi department store.

We returned to Ueno the next day to visit the Tokyo National Museum. The main building of the museum is full of historical Japanese artefacts, and I spent a good long while there learning what I could about Japanese history. The museum also contains a second building for foreign artefacts, but its collection is small and we finished there quickly. Then we went across town to the Harajuku district. We spent half an hour looking for somewhere to eat that wasn’t either ramen (by our third day together we were already sick of the stuff) or faux Italian, and finally stumbled on a decent Thai place.

After lunch we went to our main destination: the Meiji Shrine, historically the shrine of the imperial family. I guess that makes it like Westminster Abbey with more trees and fewer dead people. The shrine is found in Yoyogi Park, yet another one of Tokyo’s large green spaces. The park is lovely, and much more attractive in itself than the actual shrine. The entrance is marked by a massive torii (Shinto gate) made of wood. We passed under that to a long, tree-lined promenade that was surprisingly scenic and peaceful for being at the heart of a big city. The road eventually took us to the shrine, where we dutifully took some pictures and then headed back into the park. On our way out we stopped into the Meiji Treasure House Annex. This is a small gallery with rotating exhibits of artefacts from the imperial treasure house. Their current exhibit was of kimonos, and we got to look at some gorgeous and lavish-looking robes.

For our last dinner in the city, we went to an okonomiyaki place near the hostel. I’d told my sister that if she had to try one food in Japan, it was okonomiyaki. Fortunately I think the one we had lived up to my hype, though I was less impressed with monjayaki, which we also decided to try. Afterwards we went to Shinjuku, where I was hoping to show my sister Tokyo by night, but we got there too late and the observation deck was closed, so we just looked at some buildings and went back.

On the morning of our last day we checked out of our hostel, found a place to store our bags, and took the train east to a suburb called Mitaka. We went to visit the Ghibli Museum, tribute to Japan’s most beloved studio of children’s animated movies. I’m a fan of Ghibli films and even wrote a paper about them in university, so it seemed like this was one of the places I should see while I had the chance. Access to the museum is tightly controlled. Only a limited number of tickets are sold for each day, and have to be purchased in advance from Lawson’s convenience store. You also have to specify an entrance time when you get your ticket. Despite this, the place was packed, mostly with tykes half my height. That shouldn’t be surprising, though; the place is clearly designed with children in mind. The unusual architecture, the instructive displays about the making of animated movies, the giant stuffed Catbus – they were all things that would grab the attention of an eight-year-old. But aside from getting my picture taken with a Laputan robot I didn’t find much to hold my attention. I still recommend it if you’re travelling with kids, though.

We took the Shinkansen home, which got us back to Sendai in just over no time. I didn’t have much to show my sister in the city, but I figured I could at least take her around some of my common haunts. On Friday we went up to my school. It was a holiday so there were few people around, but I introduced her to a few of the teachers and what students had come in for club activities. Then we went downtown and took a walk along the Ichi-ban Chou looking for souvenirs. In the evening my Japanese neighbours had us over for dinner and were characteristically friendly and helpful with suggestions for things we could do.

On Saturday we took a walk around my neighbourhood, looking at rice fields, green hills, and one temple. In the evening my tea lady had us over for dinner. My poor sister had to sit patiently through an English lesson between me and the nieces, but at the end we got dinner, and the food was really good. We had sashimi rice, yakitori, and sukiyaki, and my sister was even brave enough to try natto, which I took a pass on. There was a mild aftershock that evening, one of a couple we experienced that weekend, but none of them was serious enough to be really impressive.

Our last day together was spent with my Japanese neighbours, who volunteered to drive us to Zao in Yamagata prefecture. It was my first time there, though I’d heard about it before. We stopped several places, starting with a lookout point that had partly fallen away after the earthquake, then a gorge flanked with a Martian-like landscape of red earth and rocks. Our main destination was a volcanic crater, which was pretty cool to look at and which I was unfortunately unable to do justice to with any of the pictures I took. We had a picnic lunch and drove around Yamagata city for a bit, stopping for ice-cream before driving back.

I said goodbye to my sister on Monday morning, seeing her safely to the train station before catching the bus to work. Our time together was too short, especially considering that it’ll probably be at least a year or two before we see each other again. But it was really nice to be able to show her some of my life in Japan, and it also gave me an excuse to see Tokyo.

I’m continuing with my Japanese night course, where of late we keep getting free stuff handed to us. Apparently organisations have been donating things to the “disaster victims”, which is to say us. So one night we all went home with boxes of cookies, which I can’t say I particularly needed, but which I certainly enjoyed. Much more usefully, we all got hand-crank-operated flashlight-radios, exactly the sort of thing one would be glad to have in an emergency situation. Unfortunately the radio’s range is limited to the lower frequencies used in Japan, and may not be much use in other countries, but I still plan to add it to my permanent stock of emergency supplies.

In the news this month, the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup, prompting riots in downtown Vancouver. I don’t even know what to do with that. The rioters have done nothing to make either their city or their compatriots proud of them. But mostly I’m amazed that anyone could take a hockey game that seriously while simultaneously showing such a complete lack of sportsmanship. Sometimes people disgust me.

Movies I’ve seen this month:

Monsters, Inc. – I’m finally going back and watching all the Disney films I missed over the past decade, since I got too old to go see animated movies. I’m continuing to be impressed with them. Here’s yet another one with a good premise and likeable characters that feels like it could appeal to both children and adults. I really liked the main characters and the relationship between them. My one complaint is that the film seems at a bit of a loss when it comes to its villain, shoehorning one of the more engaging supporting characters into the role late in the story. (Three and a half stars)

The Incredibles – The first of the new Disney films I’ve been disappointed in. The struggles of a superhero family to re-adjust to the superhero life sounds like a great premise, but the story was too confused and the villain to annoying to be engaging. (Two and a half stars)

The Cat Returns – Another Studio Ghibli film. Not exactly a sequel to Whisper of the Heart, but featuring one of the supporting characters. Although it has some nice ideas, the story’s kind of juvenile and disconnected. It would work well as a short-story by a junior high school student, but doesn’t make for much of a movie. (One and a half stars)

Plays I’ve seen this month:

The Lion King – Man, I’d forgotten what a great story The Lion King was. The theatrical version also has the added virtue of including several musical numbers not found in the original. An all-round enjoyable and entertaining experience!

Books I’ve read this month:

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde – Interesting piece of imaginative fiction about a young man who wishes that a painting should bear the mark of all his sins for him. I wasn’t sure what to make of the ending, and I think sometimes Wilde is so obsessed with being clever that it’s hard to know what he’s really trying to say, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Holes by Louis Sachar – I caught the movie on T.V. a few years ago and thought it seemed like an interesting story poorly executed. As it turns out, it works much better as a novel, with a whimsical yet moving story reminiscent of one of the Jacob Two-Two books. The ending leaves a lot of loose ends, which is frustrating, but it’s still a good piece of children’s fiction.

I am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki, translated by Aiko Itō and Graeme Wilson – A long, meandering, and, frankly, quite dull string of anecdotes supposedly told from the perspective of a family cat. Some of the cat’s adventures were entertaining to read about, and if the story had focused more on the animal and less on his owner it might have been a lot more enjoyable, but with a few exceptions the human side of the story consists of nothing but long-winded and absurdly pointless conversations. Maybe I’d find more humour in them if I read them in the original Japanese, or had a better understanding of the time period, but as it was I didn’t get much out of them.

Semblance of Normality - May 2011

Life in Sendai is now more or less back to normal – or at least, a reasonable semblance thereof.  In the coastal areas and around the power plant there are still lots of destruction and displaced people.  But in my part of the city things look much as they did before the earthquake, and it’s easy to forget that just a few short miles away whole neighbourhoods have been wiped out and lives upended.

May began with “Golden Week”, a week featuring three holidays in a row that is consequently a popular time for taking vacations.  I had originally thought of going somewhere for the holiday, but after the earthquake changed my spring break plans, I decided to stay home.  The only real activity I got up to was singing.  The ALTs who had done carolling back in December were invited to sing at a refuge area as part of their Children’s Day celebrations.  We sang a couple of pieces from our Christmas repertoire, as well as some other numbers that were easy to learn and that we hoped would appeal to our audience.  Given my lack of actual vocal talent, I was most fond of singing “Stand By Me”, where a group of us formed a bassline and spent the entire song singing the same four bars over and over again.  The most moving song, for me at least, was “Lean on Me”.  It’s one of those songs I’d heard many times before, but never really thought about the lyrics to.  Although I’d always liked it, the words took on new meaning for me in light of the situation, because so many people had lost everything and so many others had stepped up to donate their time and money to help.  I actually found myself getting choked up while singing it.

Speaking of donating time, I went volunteering again, and this time got sent to clean the yard of a house.  The tsunami had rolled over the whole area, leaving a water-line four feet high.  The house itself needed a lot of work too, but our job was to go through the yard collecting all the little bits of garbage that had washed up.  I worked for hours with a rake and by the time we were done had sifted through an area maybe four metres square.  I kept coming across patches of heavy black earth, which I thought at first must be ash from something burnt, but eventually discovered was petroleum.

It wasn’t until we were done working that I really took a look around me to see what other kinds of damage had been done in the area.  Right next to where I was working was a rice field that looked like a burgeoning landfill.  It would need some serious work before it was anywhere near ready for growing rice again.  The house across from us was also a mess.  Clearly no one had done anything in there either, because furniture and debris were still plied up every which way inside and the walls had holes in them.  It’s sights like those that make one appreciate the scale of work to be done.

I’ve started making elementary school visits again.  This year it looks like I’ll be spending most of my time with the grade five and six classes, which I’m happy about, since those tend to be my favourites.  I’m going to my tea lady’s house for dinner again.  Her family all survived the earthquake and seem to be fine.  At church, the English teacher from the U.S. has finally returned and is re-starting the English programme there.  It’s good to see him again, and to hear his stories about the awareness work he was doing while back home.

I was falling behind in my Japanese study even before the earthquake, and once it came it drove all thoughts of homework out of my head.  As a result, even though the JET Programme extended the deadline for submitting out tests, I regret to say that I failed to complete my correspondence Japanese course.  I wasn’t finding it very easy to stay motivated anyway, and hopefully I’ll be able to find other ways to study.  I’ve decided to sign up for another round of night classes.  I completed the beginner programme in the fall, so now I’m in the high beginner class.  I was worried my Japanese might not be good enough for it, and I’m certainly the weakest student in the class.  But clearly I have actually learned a few things over the last nine months: I find the class challenging, but I’m able to keep up with most of the material.

I got the rest of the packages my mom sent me from home.  The first ones contained a lot of snack food: granola bars, raw almonds, dried fruit, etc.  Not that free food isn’t nice, but given how easy food is to obtain here, they seemed a bit extravagant.  Still, snacks were made to be eaten, and some of them are things I haven’t been able to find here, so I’ll enjoy them.  The later packages contained oatmeal, more milk, pasta, canned fish, and beans, lots of beans.  In other word, really practical food food, the kind of food you’d be really grateful to have in a famine situation.  And again, stuff I was in no need of.  As I counted the items off I almost wanted to cry, thinking of how useful the food could have been to some people back in March.  I felt deeply unworthy of it, and wished there was some more worthy cause I could give it to.  I thought about donating it somewhere, and even asked around about it, but I don’t think there’s a big demand any more for individual food donations, and I’m not sure Japanese people would be interested in a lot of those things anyway.  So some of it’s going to get squirreled away as emergency supplies, and the rest I’ll eat up myself.

Since the beginning of April we haven’t had any really big aftershocks, and in fact they’ve died down so much that we can go whole days without feeling any.  I’m starting to relax my hyper-prepared mentality, and with the weather getting warmer I’ve decided I should drain my bathtub too.  I’ve still got my backpack packed, though, and I’ll probably keep it that way for the rest of my time here.  If there’s one lasting effect the earthquake seems set to have, it’s to keep me vigilant about natural disasters.  I wouldn’t be surprised if, even when I get back to Ottawa, I remain the person who’s always stocked-up and prepared against the next earthquake, hurricane, or triffid attack.

In the news this month, Osama bin Laden is dead.  I know I shouldn’t feel happy about that.  But I have to admit to a pang of glee when I first heard the news.  I actually wanted to jump up and shout, “Yippee!”  My own enthusiasm surprised me; it’s not like the attacks on the World Trade Center or any of his other crimes affected me personally, and I was never a fan of the so-called “War on Terror”.  But I guess those things have dominated the public consciousness so much over the past decade that I got caught up in them more than I realised.

Fortunately I had a chance to re-evaluate my attitude once the initial shock had worn off, and now my feelings are more circumspect.  Thankfully the international response has also been somewhat equivocal.  I think Stephen Harper summed it up nicely in his “sober satisfaction” speech, and I felt both gratified and humbled to hear a family member of one of the victims say that the death in no way made up for her loss.  Ultimately, this is only a reason to celebrate if it actually makes the world a safer place and prevents further loss of life in the future.  Only time will tell us that.

In other news, Canada had an election.  I didn’t vote, initially because I had too many other things on my mind, and then because by the time I got around to looking at absentee voting procedures it was too late anyway.  I wasn’t too enthusiastic about having another election, and I wasn’t expecting it to change much.  Boy was I wrong!  Not only did the Conservatives go from minority to majority government, but the Liberals got creamed, the map of Québec went from blue to orange, the N.D.P. is our new official opposition, and the Greens have their first elected member of parliament!  It’s probably the most interesting election we’ve had since 1993!  And unless you’re a Liberal or a Bloquiste there’s something to be happy about.  Although there’s arguably a lot to be unhappy about too.  On the plus side it’ll be nice to have a stable government for a change.  But I may not like all the policies it decides to enact.  I guess we’ll wait and see on that one.

In yet more news, Manitoba has been hit by serious flooding.  While this isn’t as bad as some of the natural disasters that have made the news this year, I’m still sorry to think that people in my home country are suffering, and I’m not keen on the way this year is continuing to suck.

Movies I’ve seen this month:

Toy Story 2 – Surprisingly for a sequel, I liked this quite a bit better than its predecessor.  The characters have grown out of some of their more obnoxious characteristics.  The story is also better, and surprisingly adult (in a good way).  (Three and a half stars)

Toy Story 3 – Not quite as good as the previous movie, but still a satisfying conclusion to the Toy Story trilogy.  I was once again surprised at the adult nature of the story, which perhaps made it more accessible to me.  My only complaints are that the villain feels weak and unnecessary, and there are too many twists in the last half hour.  (Three stars)

How to Train Your Dragon – A young boy from a tribe of dragon-killers befriends a dragon and learns how to fly it.  Really good idea for a story – which makes the poor execution all the more disappointing.  The animation is okay, and some of the bonding sequences are really fun to watch.  But the last part of the movie doesn’t make much sense.  And somebody needs to tell DreamWorks that obnoxious teenagers are obnoxious; apparently they haven’t heard.  (Two and a half stars)

Whisper of the Heart – A Studio Ghibli film not directed my Miyazaki.  The story is simple and sweet.  I did wish some parts had been fleshed out more, and that they’d shown more of the story the protagonist writes.  The ending is a bit laughable too, but over-all I enjoyed it.  (Three stars)