Expectations

Japan has spoken and I have listened.

"Jeffles! Stop trying to predict me!"

Ah yes, Japan. I hear you loud and clear. How could I not? Your voice surrounds me, quite literally.

A week ago, the forecast claimed that it would be raining in Okayama and Osaka until further notice. It did indeed rain the first day. And at first glance, I thought the second day might follow suit. Instead, however, the skies cleared and I sweated my proverbial skin off.

You see, a typhoon was headed for Japan. And based on the predicted path, it would be slamming straight into Okayama. (I was planning a vacation to Osaka that weekend and took the liberty of actually researching this.) Of course, the typhoon soon changed its mind, took a breath, and slammed into the eastern half of Japan instead. You have may heard about it. In fact, it is apparently still throwing up rain in parts of Japan. Here in Okayama, though, it's been all sunshine and peaches.

That's not exactly true. The temperature has dropped some 10 - 13 degrees Celsius and winds are stronger than normal. But on the balance of things, that's not so bad.

And for those who are wondering, yes I did go to Osaka! And yes, it was wonderful. Wonderfully wonderful, in fact. I shall be heading back at a later date. I had the confusing experience of getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and ants in the middle of the city, but otherwise I quite enjoyed it. There was a danjiri festival, which I of course took copious photos of. There was the eating of shaved ice. There was shopping in a store where all the employees were dressed as ninjas. And much more! I didn't make it to the castle or the Shinto shrine which is said to be the oldest in Japan, but I am planning to be back in Osaka later in October. At that time, the leaves should be changing color and I quite look forward to it.

This weekend is another three day weekend. That's right, two three day weekends in a row. Praise be to Japanese holidays. My plan is to go to Miyajima (an island with the famous red floating torii gate) for Friday and then Shiraishi Island on Sunday for the Moooo Bar's end-of-season party. Yay island time.

That's all for now. Off to the night-class! Wheeeee~

~Jeffles

The Day of the Insects

Before coming to Japan, I was warned. The country, especially in the south, had a problem with bugs. That is to say, bugs of the worst sort claim the country as their own. The fact that there are also humans nearly everywhere has apparently been no deterrent. One might even say that it encouraged them.

Where I live, the south, is prime territory for an encounter. For instance, in the entrance to my apartment (the outside entrance, not the inside) are three large spider webs. And I seriously mean large. Each web is the size of a grade school child. In fact, I'm not entirely sure that such a child hasn't previously been caught in one of these webs. I allow them to live, however, because they are preferable to the hordes of flies and mosquitoes that the webs' residents consume every day.

There are two bugs in particular that I was warned about: the mukade and the suzumebachi. Each one is devilish in its own way. The first, the mukade, literally looks like a demon. It's a giant, red centipede with pincer-like horns (in addition to its actual pincers) and a black exoskeleton that looks like demonic armor plating. I have not yet met with one of these creatures and I hope that I never will.

Here in Japan, summers are hot. Really hot. Mostly, it's the humidity that gets you, but things are made even worse by the fact that use of air conditioning is frowned upon. At home, I don't care. I use it anyway, or else I would be constantly sitting in a pool of sweat. I love the heat, truly I do. But I don't love sitting in a pool of my own sweat, soaking through my shirt, chair, and rug. I've been in hot places before, even hotter places than Japan, but I've never sweat so much in my life. It's like being in a sauna everywhere you go.

Anyway, all of this is to say that classrooms, with around 30 hot bodies in them, get very hot in the summer without air conditioning. So people tend to keep the windows open and make liberal use of fans. The idea is to get a cross-breeze going.

Bugs often will fly in and out of the room. Butterflies seem to be the most common of these. A couple days ago, though, something else entirely flew in. And worse yet, it couldn't seem to find its way out again.

At first, I thought it was a bee. Every bug that you know of back home is larger in Japan, so it was probably just a large bee. So went my thought process. And, I figured, it was probably just passing through. Wait a minute and it would be gone. Well, three minutes later, it wasn't gone. Worse still, the entire class had ground to a halt. The teacher seemed paralyzed and the students, well, the students had essentially become a screaming mob.

I realized that, just like the teacher and the students, I was doing nothing about the situation. Was I going to be scared of a creature that I am 1000x the size of? Was I no different from a third grader? Well, put like that, I decided it was time for action, time for a gaijin smash. There didn't seem to be a fly swatter of any sort, so I grabbed the text book. I would have used my hand, but I wanted to avoid getting stung. This turned out to be a smart idea.

The bug flew near me and I swung my textbook, but missed. The students screamed as one as they realized what I was doing. "Stupid gaijin, aggravating the giant insect!" they seemed to say. Well, I thought, if I don't do it, then it ain't gonna leave. So I chased it to a window on the other side of the class room. As I continued to swat at what I thought was a giant bee, I finally understood the babbling of the students. They had been saying "suzumebachi."

Now, let's pause here for a moment and head over to wikipedia. What does it have to say about the suzumebachi? First of all, it clearly points out that this insect is not a bee, it is a hornet. An Asian Giant Hornet, to be exact. More importantly, however, it says that "Each year in Japan, the human death toll caused by Asian giant hornet stings exceeds that of all other venomous and non-venomous wild animals combined, including wild bears and venomous snakes." Yeah, that's right, the suzumebachi is deadlier than wild bears and venomous snakes.

A few more points from the wikipedia page for your perusal:

1) Its venom is potent enough to kill you even if you're not allergic to it.

2) Its venom is potent enough to dissolve human tissue.

3) Due to the fact that its mandibles are so incredibly large, it can bite and sting you at the same time.

4) It is a hornet, so it can sting you as many times at it wants, just in case it wasn't satisfied the first time around.

5) When it stings you, the chemicals in its venom attract other suzumebachi, so now you get to deal with a whole horde of them instead of just one.

So I think you'll understand why, when I heard the word "suzumebachi," I dropped the textbook and went for a weapon with a slightly larger reach. A fellow teacher passed me a broom and I wondered why no one had given me one earlier. I guess fear is to blame for that, too. Anyway, I eventually managed to trap the killer hornet behind a glass pane and slowly push it outside.

I returned to the front of the class, unharmed and a hero to thirty-odd third graders. Later that day, I noticed that my preying mantis friend had returned to my bike basket. It made me glad to know that he was safe. After all, suzumebachi like to eat those guys too.

~Jeffles

When One Week is Two and Typhoons Ruin ALL Your Fun, Blog About It!

I've been teaching now for about a week, but somehow, it already feels longer. I have to wonder why this is? Perhaps it's been so boring that I feel like I've been thrust into some sort of rut from which I can't get out? After all, they say that time flies when you're having fun, and obviously time is not flying.

I don't think that's it, though. After all, I'm not bored. Seriously, not even in the least. In fact, I feel almost as if I've been run off my feet. Every class I've been to is completely different from the others and requires a different approach. Add that on to the fact that I have eight different schools and hundreds of kids' faces and names to memorize. Whoever said that Japanese kids are all the same obviously had no idea what he or she was talking about. And then there's the travel time (by bike, of course) between schools and Judo classes on top of that. It's exhausting.

Furthermore, contrary to my earlier statement, time actually does fly. In class, I can't help but feel as if I don't have anywhere near enough time to present everything. As well, I constantly feel as if I need more time to prepare myself for class, both mentally and physically. And I'm always wondering if I'm going to actually make it to class in time. It's as if I actually don't have enough time in the day.

Yet, when I'm lying on the floor at home, I look back on everything that happened and I think to myself, "Wow, that was a long day." I think about how much I accomplished and wonder if it all really happened in only a few hours. I think it is this that my sense of an elongated work week is derived from. I am doing so many things that it seems as if each day was actually two days. Apply this to a week full of wide-eyed first-encounters and we end up with an exhausted Jeffles who feels as if two weeks have been packed into one. Frankly, I'm surprised I didn't see this coming.

In other news, a typhoon passed through the country over last weekend. As it's Thursday, this is old news. But it hasn't been mentioned on this blog, so it ain't old news here! Also, it was my first typhoon, so it deserves mention.

The storm landed on Friday morning. Friday was also my first day of school. Because of the typhoon, though, they crammed all my classes into the morning and told me to head on home after lunch. First day and things are already interesting! (I'm also fairly certain that I fended off two kancho attempts, speaking of interesting.)

The bike ride home, normally a 20 minute affair, took nearly twice as long due to the wind and rain. I had to stop two times, just to catch my breath, and am fairly certain that I would have actually made it home faster if I were walking. Thanks to that ride, I decided that there was no way I was leaving my home until the storm had passed. As it turns out, I had actually been biking home at what was essentially the worst time of day to be out.

I wasn't so lucky as to actually be able to stay inside all weekend, though. I couldn't even stay inside all day. That night was the welcome party for the new ALTs in my town (of which I am obviously one). So out I went again, though luckily the wind and rain had temporarily died down. Thinking luck was on my side, I decided to bike to the meeting spot. Bad decision.

The party itself was great. We each gave short speeches in broken Japanese to much applause, then proceeded to consume vast quantities of both food and booze. I personally spent much of the night attempting to communicate with my fellow Japanese workers to varying degrees of success. When the first party finished, we then moved on to the second location, a karaoke lounge that apparently the party had rented out. The fooding and boozing continued, of course, until I was well past tipsy.

This is when my bad decision became obvious. During the course of 5 or so hours, the typhoon's fury had returned. I had a choice to make; either bike back through the wind and rain and drunken haze, or leave my bike out in the elements and have to go pick it up the next day, when the typhoon was expected to be ever stronger and I would be in the full grip of a terrible hang over. It was a lose-lose situation.

"Let's get this over with," I thought, and proceeded to bike home. As I don't actually remember the bike ride home, I would like to believe that I made the right decision. After all, what you can't remember can't hurt you, right? Ahem...

Anyway, I stayed inside for the rest of the weekend. We ALTs had been planning to take part in a tea ceremony on Saturday, but seriously? Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.

By Sunday morning, the typhoon had gone and taken all its bad juju with it. Since then, the skies have been clear and the winds have been delightfully light. The mornings and evenings are starting to get cool, though. It looks like Fall is on its way.

~Jeffles

Farewell, Dear August

I have been in Japan for a month. I know this because August has ended and when I arrived, August had only just begun. This also means that summer is over.

For the last week or so, I've had a regular companion on my way to work. I was half-way to work one morning when I realized that there, on my bike's front basket, sat a preying mantis. At first I thought it was just a withered, curled up leaf. In fact, that leaf was two preying mantises (mantisi?), gettin' it on in the summer heat. That's right, my bike was defiled with insectoid love juices.

The next time I saw the "withered, curled up leaf," it was without its special friend. I've heard that a preying mantis will eat its lover after sex. So when I saw my lonely companion, I was a little concerned. What happened to the other one? I never found out.

The remaining preying mantis joined me on my morning bike rides to work a total of six times. By the sixth time, it was almost a friendly sight. Twice it had climbed up towards the handlebars, as if seeking comfort in my proximity. Now, I wouldn't call myself particularly squeamish, but I'm also not that fond of bugs. So even though I felt I was getting on somewhat friendly terms with this preying mantis, I was also well aware of its warrior reputation. Sadly, I must report that I rebuffed both of its advances and did not allow it to climb upon my hand.

This morning I noticed a brown, curled up leaf lying at the bottom of the staircase, twiggy legs sticking up into the air, motionless.

I have read that a preying mantis only lives for 8 or 9 months, so I won't mourn the little fella's passing. It was probably his/her time. It did, however, make me feel even stronger that something was coming to an end. I usually get this feeling at the end of the summer, but this time it seems a little bit different. This time it seems as if I'll never have a real summer again. My guess: that's because I won't.

Today I am the only person in the office. The other ALTs in my town have all started teaching at their schools, but I start tomorrow. As we have spent the last month, all of us, sitting here in this office, our sudden separation is undoubtedly fueling my sense of the "end times."

On the positive side, I expect that tomorrow I will have a renewed sense of adventure. Tomorrow I begin to teach. It will be a new experience for me and I fully expect to be both freaked out and completely immersed in my surroundings.

But for now, things are ending and that's a little sad.

~Jeffles