November 30, 1999

Hello from Japan!

Here at Wadayama High School, the end of the year testing is about to commence.  Basically, all the students are really stressed out, all except for the third-year students, the senior class.  Pretty much they are resolved?they`ll be getting out soon so why stress?  The ones who dream about going to college have already prepped for their entrance examinations, and these last few weeks of school will not make a difference to the ones who have given up all hopes of going to college.  Basically, they sleep in most of the classes.  I think they might harbor some resentment toward me at times when I insist that they get out of their seats and actually DO something in class!!  Heh heh heh!

Things have been pretty busy besides even THAT�clet me catch you up on everything.  Let me see, okay, Ken first.  Ken is teaching a multitude of levels.  On his days at Yoka HS, he teaches some of the brightest kids in Japan, literally.  The English level is good as long as he can keep them awake.  Most of the little girls are in love with him, but there`s no huge surprise there!  He has been stocking up on emergency provisions for the winter and for the unlikely event that Y2K gives anyone any trouble.  That`s my Ken?Mr. Survival Instinct himself.  Actually, I am thankful that he took it upon himself to get us prepared for the �gjust in case�h scenarios.  Otherwise I would have left it until the final weekend and who knows if I could have remembered everything we need!  We brought most of our gear with us, which doubles as emergency supplies, so we were pretty well stocked to begin with.  But he still made a list a mile and a half long of things to have on hand, including the famous bag of kitty litter for the cars.  Did I tell you about the kitty litter thing he has?  Its actually a great idea, and fairly inexpensive if you DON�fT live in Japan�cbut I digress.  Last year, he bought a bag of the stuff for each of our vehicles and we put it in the trunks.  Oh yeah?it`s to get some traction under the back tires in the event you are stuck in the mud or in icy sludge�cworks like a charm, and YES, we have actually had to use it once.  Great idea if you are on the go, and he has this fear of Jessica and me being stuck without him around to get us out of it while there is some storm or something going on.  Anyway?the bag that was in my trunk got punctured, and there was a trunkload of kitty litter just kind of shifting around back there for awhile driving me crazy until I finally got the vacuum cleaner fixed again and cleaned it all up.  For awhile there, there was a brand-new bag sitting in our front room waiting to be split in half and re-bagged for the cars.  People would come to visit us and look suspiciously at the bag and then look around the rooms of the house, wondering where the cat could be.  I sort of thought this was funny, since most people would not even ask why we had it, and it got to be sort of an inside joke.  A funny joke, until the day the landlord showed up.  He actually asked, and I had to walk him through the place to prove we had no forbidden pets.  I had to assure him that Jessica and I were highly allergic to cats and that besides, if a cat was present then he would certainly be able to sniff it out.  No matter how hard you try to disguise it, there is always that cat smell, which is why rental overlords charge extra deposits for pets in general.  I have digressed again, sorry.  So Ken got us cat litter.  There`s big news.  I promise we have been busier than all that.  Back to his schedule?on Wednesdays he goes to Oya HS, which are the bottom-of-the-barrel students.  Most of those kids will be lucky to get jobs working road construction.  I half-expect to see some in elevators in the future.  This is a real job here in this country.  They have training for people to be able to push the buttons on the elevator.  Talk about job satisfaction�cwhoa�c

Jessica can be heard these days reading every sign in Japanese within her field of vision, and some that are well outside it as well.  Occasionally, you will hear something like this from her:
Jessica: �gma-lee-ee-ku-lee-su-ma-su�chey Mom!  That sign says Merry Christmas.�h
Me: (looking at the sign and seeing no reindeer or trees or Santa-san�c)�hAre you sure?�h
Jessica: �gDidn�ft you hear what I just read?  That says Merry Christmas.�h
Me: (squinting to see the sign better, as if suddenly perhaps I can read Japanese�cnope.)
�gIs that really what it says?  But there is nothing else that LOOKS Christmasy there.)
Jessica: (looking very wise�c) �gStill�cthat`s what it says.  By the way, if you are still going to the post office, you missed the sign.  It was in Japanese too?way back there at the pink bank.�h
Me: �g�cwhich is why I brought you with me?so you could help me find it since I DON�fT read Japanese.  I wish you had told me sooner.�h
Jessica: �gYes, but we were talking about Christmas.�h
[we turn the car around]
Me: �gI am really proud of the way you have learned so much so quickly.  You will have to help your stupid mother learn how to get around in Japan, okay?�h
Jessica: (completely missing her cue to tell me I am not stupid?oh yeah that`s right?I AM STUPID
--until she has kids of her own at least�c) �guhhhh, Mom�c�h
Me: �gYeah?�h
Jessica: �gMom�c�h
Me: �gYes, Jessica?�h
Jessica: (staring at me) �g�c�c�c�h
Me: �gI`m growing old here behind the wheel, Jessica�cplease tell me what it is.�h
Jessica: (flatly) �gYou missed the pink bank again.�h

Our conversations really sound a lot like that sometimes.  Most days Jessica can be seen in a group of
Giggling girls at Itoi Elementary.  She has a lot of friends, and when I pick her up in the afternoons,
they are usually all crowded around babbling away in Japanese to each other.  She is picking it up
quickly enough that she understand most of what is being said in her classes at school.  I think that
this is a wonderful thing.  I see that in years to come, if she can keep some of this kind of skill, it
would really be great for her!  

The format on the machine is all screwed up again.  Sometimes it does some kind of weird auto-formatting.  I know that there is a button to push to restore it to what I was originally using, but all the stinking commands are still in Japanese.  Go figure.  I just told it to do something, and it gave me the little hourglass, telling me to wait, and then it told me something and asked if it was okay, again in Japanese.  So now, I have ultimately agreed to something I have no clue about.  This is typical for me, right?  Sigh�coh well�c

As for me, I am teaching more classes than I am contracted for, but I am loving it.  Yes, I am still volunteering to do stuff, but I like this job very much.  This past week, I have been teaching about Thanksgiving, and have looked up all that stuff about the history of the holiday that I ignored the commentators saying when watching the parade on television because I was much more interested in when the huge balloon of Underdog would appear.  I always figured those guys were just wasting air time with useless information while they let all the marching boy scout troops, the convertibles with beauty queens and the Shriners on tricycles pass.  Who wanted to see all that crap anyway?  Now I see that perhaps old whatshisname with the plastic-preacher-hairdo probably read a bunch of good facts (researched and written by someone else, naturally�c) while I sat eating a bowl of Cream-of-Wheat despite the fact that my Mom said I should save some space for the gorge-o-rama that would follow at MeeMaw`s house shortly.  At any rate, I have now re-learned all those dates and figures and facts, and the whole thing is really staggering.  I have learned so much more about America since I came to Japan.  It is incredible how much more I know about our holidays, about our customs, about our economy, about our culture, about our history (or lack thereof, really�c) about us in general.  Coming to Japan has changed my life.  It has changed the way I look at everything, how I value everything, how I understand the world (and how I don�ft�c) and it is an incredible experience.

I have also been blessed with a couple of great teachers for team-teaching.  They are really young, and this is their first year, so they are affectionately known as �gfreshman teachers.�h  I have been unofficially charged with training them in the art of classroom management.  This is no easy task, but I teach nearly every class with these two women.  One is Satomi Goto.  Her English pronunciation is excellent, and she is eager to learn usage and common phrases, etc.  She is still learning to command a classroom, but she will be an excellent teacher once she gains some confidence.  That will come with age also, I`m afraid.  She is so young, and looks sort of like a student except that she is not in a uniform.  Some of these kids have siblings older than she is, so she has the same problem I had when I subbed in high schools.  They want to be friends with her, so the respect thing is hard-earned.  It will come in time, though, because she has some real intelligence.  She is also very courageous?truly a lamb with a lion`s heart?and recently confessed that she would like to go to America to study English, and would I please help her to find a school???  She will be just fine there.  The other teacher is Yuko Arakawa.  She is one year younger, but is tall and aggressive in the classroom, so she commands their attention.  She does not hesitate to wake the kids in class, and invests in the students in a personal way.  She has a real passion for teaching, and once she has some experience there, she will also be great.  She has been to Canada, and to Las Vegas and Disneyland and other various touristy places in America, just enough to get a taste for Western culture (or lack thereof, really�c) The thing that impresses me most about Yuko is her thirst to know things.  She will ask me to have a cup of coffee during a slow period and will ask about how life was for me in America during any given year.  I will talk for a few minutes, only stopping occasionally to explain the slang I used that she didn�ft know.  Then she will tell me about the same year, or the same year of HER life, since I have seven years on her.  I tell her �git`s okay?you are the same age as Tracy, so I know the years you are talking about�c�h  She has a relative that she mentions who is my age, either an older sister or an aunt, I cant remember which�cbut she said several times her name and that she misses this person very much.  I think we kind of fill a void for one another at times.  We talk quite a bit, usually very deeply, about humanity, about violence, about how noboby should ever have to suffer being fifteen years old, about how our two countries view what happened at Hiroshima, about religion, about the times we had too much beer in college.  She is extremely bright, and I enjoy our discussions.  She is very polite with me, as I tend to get a little long-winded. 
Okay?no comments from the peanut gallery.

I still need to respond to all the stuff you wrote in your letter.  I think I am going to close this document and try to fix the format problem.  Things like this just drive me bananas.  Yes, I realize that �gbananas�h is so close to me at any given time that it is truly a waste of fuel to drive.  But if I had said that �gthings like this just walk me bananas,�h or �gthings like this just roller-blade me bananas,�h then you would assume that I was there already.
I hear bananas is nice this time of year.
Okay?that will do---please continue taking care of each other.  Thank you for indulging my babbling.  Let me hear from you!  Lynley