Click
on picture to enlarge.Emails from Kirsten & Naoto
February 2003
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 01:54:55 -0800 (PST)
Subject: More tales of josai and ubergeek husband
Dear Friends and Family
Mia's favorite word is still "daikon", but now she says "wee wee wee" as she walks around and plays. She just loves repeating words that we say.
Mia's favorite toys right now are a stuffed Doggy (which plays strange heart beat music reminiscent of X Files scary background music) she got from my Aunt Nancy and spoons.
Naoto and I are arguing about Valentine's day. You see, in Japan the woman is supposed to give chocolate to the man instead of the other way around. I told him he is married to an American so he has to do it the American way. This was apparently not convincing enough.
More Tales of Josai
So a couple things about the scariness of Josai students here.
One, an Iranian-American English teacher named Reza is about to quit. I only talked to him a couple of times, but always found him to be a funny and interesting person to talk to. He says he is "burned out on the anti-students" at Josai. He made little dodging motions and said in a Japanese accent, "no, no, you can't get me to learn."
Sadly, the image is apt.
Two, I had to proctor some English placement tests. I did this three times yesterday. Out of 150 students, I would say about 50 of them finished within the first three minutes of the testing period. Yes, that means they just filled in the little circles any which way. Now, I have complaints about the test itself and the way it is administrated, but jeez, can't you even pretend to be doing it?
Third, okay, this is the scary, juicy bit. There has been violence associated with Josai in the past week. First, a 10 year veteran Canadian teacher here had to step in and stop a student from physically assaulting a Japanese male teacher during final exams. Apparently the Japanese teacher was accusing the student of cheating and grabbed a paper away. The Canadian teacher said that the Japanese teacher "had it coming" because of the very rude way he was addressing the student. All I can say is, there is no way anyone is ever "asking for it." This sounds like a little testosterone fest to me.
Also, apparently a Josai student was arrested a few days ago. He got his girlfriend (a minor) to pretend to be a sex-phone prostitute. When the first John went to meet her, the Josai student and some friends jumped out, hit the guy, stuck him in the trunk of their car, and took him to a loan shark company. There they forced him to borrow 5000 dollars.
Two things I want to say about that. First, what a doofus. Only 5000 dollars? If you're going to be criminal, at least do it for a significant amount of money. Second, I guess I will be more careful about who I fail in the future!
Ubergeek husband
So we were discussing my inability to draw today. I had doodled some faces during the three testing periods I had yesterday and Naoto found them. I defended myself by saying I only did it to pass the time. Naoto then got this proud look on his face and told me what he used to do during left over time during testing.
Apparently he 1) calculated the square root of 2 ad finitum and 2) tried to write all the Japanese prefectures in kanji.
Can anyone say ubergeek? Let's just see what happens the next time he tries to tease me about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.....
Kirsten
P.S. The two pictures are taken at Namiki fudo, a shrine/temple complex near us in Naruto. The shrine is on this little hill. While we were there, the priest and some men were getting ready for the Japanese Setsubun. (for more information about this bean-throwing, demon-bashing introduction of Spring holiday, see http://www.embjapan.dk/Spotlight2/Setsubun.htm)
Mia seemed to like the priest's bald head. She pointed at it several times and said "duck." However, she was afraid of the somewhat scary guardian statues outside the shrine. They were red, I wonder if she thought they were the Santa Claus Colonel Sanders?
Click
on picture to enlarge.
Click
on picture to enlarge.
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 03:08:18 -0800 (PST)
Subject: The Seal of Citizenship and Clusters of Sin
Dear Friends and Family: Mia's favorite word has changed from "daikon" now to "wan-wan" (the sound of a dog barking in Japanese.) Everything is "wan-wan"; including cars, birds, mommy, and water.
Naoto had a bad day. It seems the Oakland A's star player (Miguel Tejada) is becoming a free agent at the end of this year. Poor guy. (I mean Naoto of course)
The Seal of Citizenship
Let me tell you about the Juminhyo. The Jyuminhyo is as important in Japan as a social security number in the states. It is a piece of paper telling the government where you live, who your family is, etc. etc.
So foriegners can not get a Juminhyo. Even second and third generation Korean and Chinese born in Japan can not get a Juminhyo. I am not listed on Naoto's (so Mia is officially motherless)because I am a foriegner.
The problem with that is it sometimes makes official things a pain in the but. You want a credit card? Oh, show us your juminhyo with your address and everything. Oh, don't have one? Sorry!
So get this. A seal was discovered in a river in Tokyo a few months back. The media got all mushy on the seal and named it "Tama-chan." There were "tama chan" sightings and stuffed animals and everything.
So now the mayor of the little city where Tama chan was first discovered is making him an official citizen; yes, giving him a juminhyo. You can imagine some of the outrage of "foriegners" (people living in Japan over 20 years, people who lived in Japan their whole lives) who are denied a juminhyo over this.
I mean, I don't even see how they could officially fill out the form. What are they going to put under "place of birth"?
(just to prove that I am not making this up, see;
http://www.issho.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=596&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
)
Clusters of Sin
Another disturbing trend I see in Gumyo is the proliferation of Pachinko (a form of mindless gambling done in noisy, smoke-filled parlors) here.
Despite the so-called depression, and despite the fact that Gumyo is pretty hick territory, three Pachinko parlors have gone up in the time that I have lived here.
Of course if you have a pachinko parlor, you need a ramen restaurant next door. You also then need a "love hotel" (a hotel where you pay by the hour, less sleazy than in the states and with more amenities) to go with it.
I just can't imagine either my old lady farmers or my surfer students playing pachinko for hours, stepping out for some ramen, and then hitting a love hotel with a lover.
Who is going to these dens of iniquity?
love and light, Kirsten
Click on picture to make the tree grow
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 02:58:11 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Things I like about Japan 2
Dear Friends and Family
Wow, Mia is becoming a toddler! She toddles all around the house now. We took her to a department store and she and Naoto had great fun toddling (well in Naoto's case it was just walking) up and down aisles.
She has moved on from "daikon" now and everything is "wan-wan." (the noise a dog makes in Japanese)
We just came back from visiting Naoto's parents in Tokyo. Baba and Jiji babysat Mia on Valentine's day night so we could go to a romantic Italian restaurant. It was great. We drank strangely colored cocktails and ate in courses. (I love eating in restaurants with courses!)
Things I like about Japan 2
Strangely colored cocktails with flavors including Lychee liquor and other weird fruits
The public address system (we get announcements all the time like "a 70 year old man from Togane is missing. Please call such and such a number if you see him. He is wearing a blue sweatsuit" etc. etc.)
Doritos (in Japan they have flavors like "tomato and basil" "herb cheese" and "french onion soup")
Taxes (you pay as you go and there is usually no question of having paid the wrong amount at the end of the year)
Construction traffic guides (whereever there is construction being done on roads, there are always men or women traffic guides. Their whole purpose is to stand there and help traffic. It seems a waste of man power but it really helps! Also, construction workers aren't limited to any particular color in Japan. Sometimes the men even where purple or pink!)
oh yeah, then there's Naoto. I like him.
love and light,
Kirsten
Click on picture to enlarge
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 03:37:03 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Let's Ecology
Dear Friends and Family
Well, Mia, as you can see below, is beginning to eat things by herself. She really gets frustrated now if you even begin to touch her cup when she's trying to drink out of it.
Naoto has also trained her to say "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL" (reminiscent of spanish-speaking announcers covering soccer matches) whenever she kicks our toy soccer ball.
Yesterday, Mia had her first bad fall as a walking girl. We were walking down a paved path at my school and she fell face down. She cut her lip and scraped her chin. There was a lot of blood. Mia was soon distracted, but I think it really gave Naoto a big shock! (two hours later she was eating citrus fruits with no problem, so the cut must not have been that bad)
I spent today interviewing motivated and surprisingly articulate students for the "English Express" track - a new english curriculum- here at Josai. One student, when asked if she would like to take part in Josai's semester abroad program in either Canada or the U.S., answered "Canada. Last year, big (hands denoted explosion here)in U.S. I feel safe in Canada"
I wonder if anyone's told her about Moose and bears? Or the freezing cold winters? (Naoto said it was so cold in Winnipeg in winter that his jeans froze)
Let's Ecology
I have lots to say about the various attributes of Japanese television.... but I won't get into all of that here.
Let me just say that right now a musical group (think of back street boys without harmony) called "SMAP" is on (it seems to me) all the time. They have their own show all together (there's five of them) and then the various members appear on a variety of different quiz shows.
So the Saturday SMAP show now features two of the band (the leader who truly can't sing a note and the ambiguous sexuality, cross-dressing, chemically damaged hair one) doing a garbage separation quiz.
In Japan, each city has its own rules for separating garbage. When I lived in Morioka (northern Japan, kind of like Minnesota) I separated garbage into "burnable" and "nonburnable". Then on special days we would have the "large garbage" collection- old sofas, big boxes, tv sets, etc. (There used to be a joke about how retired salarymen would be called "large garbage" [sodai gomi] by their wives because they sat around all day and did nothing.)
Then I lived in Utsunomiya (the buckeye state! I kid you not, the actual prefectural tree is a buckeye) and I had to separate garbage into "burnable" "unburnable" "glass" and "plastic bottles"
Now I live in Chiba (haven't quite figured out which state this corresponds to, but it might be Pennsylvania or Maryland) and the separation rules are so complex I have to let Naoto do it.
Anyway, back to my original story, which is the quiz show. The two SMAP members compete in correctly identifying which category items should be thrown away in (burnable, unburnable, recyle). Usually Japanese quiz shows are pretty easy for me, but this one stumps me most every time. Let's see how you do!
1. a cardboard box
a. recycle
b. burnable
c. unburnable
d. take the tape off the bottom and throw it in
burnable and then fold the cardboard and throw it in
recyle.
2. a glass milk bottle with a crack in it
a. recycle
b. burnable
c. unburnable
d. throw it in the recycle can, however, if it should
break when you do that, then you need to put it in
unburnable
3. chalk
a. recycle
b. burnable
c. unburnable
(answers are 1. d 2. d. 3. c)
As you might be able to guess, the U.S. is WAY behind on garbage disposal. The other thing I like about Japan's waste removal system is that everyone on a block takes their garbage to one main area. The garbage men don't have to come around to every single house. Imagine the savings in gas alone! No yucky garbage cans littering people's lawns.
I suppose the waste removal technicians' union wouldn't be too fond of that idea.
love and light
Kirsten
Click
on the spaghetti girl to enlarge