Bird's Eye View

Back at work, and I'm starting to worry about Odd Sensei.  She's been getting her schedules mixed up, and I think Princi-Pal is noticing.  He's not one to take screw ups lightly.  Actually, I think the heat is putting everyone on edge.  I get happier in warm weather, but I've noticed that every year, the teachers and students seem agitated until cooler weather returns.  So, maybe Princi-Pal is a little prickly right now.  

The kids...well, some of them seem genuinely surprised that I expect them to follow certain rules.  Ya know, stay in your seat, don't do other homework in class, don't talk while the teacher is talking, always bring the necessary materials to class, and always focus on the task at hand.  So, I end up bring the bad guy.  Reading novels in class?  Come on, man, I shouldn't have to enforce a rule like that.  But, I'm the only one who sees it.

Which brings me to another observation of mine.  Japanese people don't see anything unless it's right in front of them.  Trust me, if there's any easier group of people to sneak up on, I can't imagine them still being alive.  I could be standing right next to a kid for a minute, and they won't notice me until they turn their head. And then they nearly jump out of their skin.  This is why I make as much noise as I can when I move, especially around old people.  I will knock down an entire aisle of soup cans just to make sure I don't give some little old lady a heart attack.

So when I'm the only person who can see that half the students are sleeping, and the other half are playing with their calculators, talking to the person behind them, drawing on their desks or reading some novel with a scantily clad anime girl on the cover...it doesn't surprise me anymore.  I even tell the kids, "I'm tall.  I can see EVERYTHING.". But...they still try to get away with it.  In, like...the lamest ways possible, too.  If you're gonna hide a comic book inside your textbook, don't hold your textbook up like you're trying to hide your face.  And if you're gonna talk in class, learn to whisper.  Or pass notes, or something.  I think the blatant ineptitude is what frustrates me most!  But it does make me wonder...was I just as obvious as a kid?  Did the teachers know exactly what we were doing and just let it be?  Maybe that's what I've gotta learn to do?  Or is that just a sign of a teacher who has given up?  Maybe I'm just trying too hard...  But I'll tell you one thing:  teachers here give up way too quickly, and it creates kids who think no one cares what they do.  And I'm sorry, but I genuinely want these kids to learn how to focus.  Study skills are never taught here, and it shows.  Eh...whatever.  I'll keep doing my thing.

Today's lunch was Japanese...but chock full of salt.  We had shrimp dumplings, bean sprout salad, rice, milk, and a soy-sauce based soup with fried tofu, konnyaku, pork, carrots and cabbage in it.  Take a look!

I never drink the broth, man.  As a kid, I loved salt, but now I'm really nervous around the stuff.  Even Princi-Pal was like, "What were they thinking?  We're Japanese!  We like mild flavors!  Isn't that right, J?"

Darn right, sir.  Darn right,

J

The burden of being blessed with wonderful friends and family

Here I sit at my desk in Plum Valley JHS with nothing to do.  I've finished my classes for the day, some good, some bad, and now I'm just...killing time.

Today's lunch was carb-tastic.  Pan-fried noodles (yakisoba), a potato-cheese croquette, mayonnaise burdock salad, bread and milk.  They must be trying to kill me...

But let's move beyond work.

I do believe I've lost most of my time for introspection, which is a very sad thing, but recently, I stumbled upon something that has been stressing me out to no end.  I'm a person with a pretty good memory.  It completely bails on me from time to time, but I tend to hold on to a lot of information.  One of the worst applications of this is debts owed.  See...I don't really like when people help me, because I will always remember it as something I must repay.  And in Japan, people help you all the time.  I've got people all over this country to whom I owe a lot...and it kills me.  I probably don't have to remember it all, but I just can't let it go.  Of course these people we're kind to me because they wanted to be kind to me, and not because they wanted anything in return, but...I can't just let it end like that.  I've even got people in America who I feel like I owe.  Every little meal, every bit of help they gave me just makes it all heavier.  And yes, of course, I feel like I need to repay my parents for bailing me out one particularly painful year, and for all those things they did that I took for granted.  Any wrong doing, any disrespect, any unintentional bullying...all these things weigh on my conscience pretty heavily.  And the worst part of it all...that heaviness actually makes me pull away from people.  Like, if you do me a huge favor, I honestly can't look you in the face until I can pay it back properly.  I can barely pick up the phone to speak to you, and even e-mails will start to dwindle.

So, I have two choices,  I can either find a way to somehow mentally set myself free from debts I'm pretty sure no one expects me to repay, or I can go out, make the most of myself, and use that heaviness for more momentum to push forward, and attain the means to repay all those people.  Actually, there is a third choice of "pay it forward"...

Let's aim for #2, yeah?  Yeah,  that sounds good.  With a healthy mix of #3.  K?  K.

J

Skinny Little Devils

So......Tuesday.  

Nothing major.  But I gotta say, I'm noticing a certain...coldness in The New Girl.  Like, she's smiling when she looks at you, or when she needs help, but if you watch her out of the corner of your eye, all that disappears.  And what's left is...a bit of a scowl.  Of course, I might just be imagining things.  I'm usually very wary of conventionally attractive females of all ages.  Ah, trauma...still got me in your grips, I see.

Here's lunch for that day:

In other news, I was finally able to return to teaching one of my personal classes after school.  This Tuesday one is fun; my students are a woman, her daughter who is my age, and an old guy who is just awesome.  I think he's secretly Japan's version of James Bond, but...I'm afraid that if I learn too much about him, he'll have to kill me.  Unfortunately, he couldn't come today.  But I still had the ladies, and they are a funny duo.  After teaching them about chickenpox, vaccinations and tornadoes, we somehow got on the topic of Japanese men, specifically the current generation of young men. The ladies were of the opinion that men were getting far too thin these days, and it was making them feel...creeped out.  Men should have some muscle, they said, but not too much.  Just enough to make them look like men, not girls.  I laughed, and they went on to say that they'd like to see more men with six-pack abs.  These ladies are definitely not like other women in Japan.

The current trend is long hair, tight pants, no muscle.  This is for dudes, mind you,  we're entering and age where Japanese men are prettier than the women, and that's just how the ladies want it.  Not that they'd ever date such dudes, but they'd like to see men like that walking around.  I'm not talking metrosexuals, or men who keep themselves well groomed.  I mean men who probably couldn't lift their own child if they had one.  I understand that Japan has always had a different view of manliness than the West, but those guys still were tough.  They endured.  Stamina, perseverance and patience were the qualities of the old Japanese man.  Now?  I dunno what's going on, but pants are getting unbelievably tight, and that spells disaster for me.  Also the future of Japan.  I mean...I'm seeing 40-year-old men like this.and 40 is pretty darned grown in Japan.  Imagine an emo-uncle.  Yeah.  Like that.

My prediction?  The future Japan will be a bunch of skinny dudes, skinny girls, cigarettes and no kids.  Foreigners will have taken all the others far away.

The ladies agree with my prediction.  We gotta bring back the muscle in this country.  I need to take one dude and one chick and put them on a special workout program where they actually eat, get them both looking decent and then post pictures.  Then I can release a DVD.  And then...profit.

I've found my calling.

J

Tornado!

Well...these four days were a bit of a bust.  It rained like crazy, which meant rice planting was really slowed down.  Golden Week, this long string of vacation days, is when most farm folks do their rice planting.  It's an all day process, and if it looks like it might rain, they just can't do it for fear of...something.  I really don't know how it all works.  All I know is, my girlfriend's family needs to do it, and she helps, and with all the delays and uncertainty, I barely got to see her all weekend.  But, hey, I like rain, so I was unusually calm.  And I got a chance to regain a bit of my strength.

I can't say that for some of the other people in my area, because something very strange occurred on Sunday.  A tornado dropped in the town next to me.  I should have known something weird was coming when the hail started falling.  We get hail maybe once a year around these parts, but this stuff was pretty big.  Looked like popcorn was falling...but it sounded like marbles.  I felt sorry for any poor sound trapped out there.  Shortly after that, my girlfriend sent me the news: a tornado suddenly formed over the northern part of the big city south of me.  Now, being a Floridian, I wasn't really surprised by it.  I mean...I'm used to the sky trying to kill me. But then I thought about where I am.  The country of soft houses.  Remember a while back when I talked about how a storm had my little apartment creaking?  Imagine what an F2 tornado could do to a neighborhood of similarly built houses.  Yeah...it destroyed so much.  Even killed a kid.  This country just can't get a break from weird occurrences...

I went back to school the next day and found that no one else had really reacted either.  It was more of a, "Eh...stuff happens" kinda feel.  Actually, that's exactly how it was after the earthquake.  Tough folks.

Meanwhile, at Plum Valley, we seem to be settling in.  The New Girl is finding her stride, Gyro is struggling with 5 classes a day, but he seems to be accepting his fate, and Odd Sensei is pushing through her troubles here and at home.  The one problem is that one particularly loud and outspoken student seems to have a problem with The Other Girl.  Maybe he's just a jerk, but he's been vocalizing his disgust with her just a little too openly.  I'm a bit unsure how to handle this, because I want to help, but I also know that she's gonna face crap like this all through her career, so she's gotta learn.  Even so, if that kid steps too far...I might have to knock him down.  Verbally.  What?  I'm not gonna deck my student!

Here's lunch for today...

Very Japanese.  We got fish, boiled spinach in sesame marinade, rice, milk, and a soup with tofu, carrots, potatoes konnyaku and pork.

I think my lack of energy is shortening these blog entries...

J

Short, but...well, short.

Wednesday, Wednesday.

This is actually the las day of school for this week.  That's a very good thing, considering how weak I am these days.  I'm not saying I'm wobbly and faint-prone, but I ain't at my best, that's for darn sure.  And wouldn't ya know it, River Blossom JHS decides to give me classes for five out of six possible periods today.  But, I gotta say, they may work me harder, but they certainly care more about my well-being here.  Maybe I've said that before...  I can never be sure anymore.

Anyway, there's a lady who sits directly across from my desk, and she has apparently adopted me as her son, as her own son done up and r-u-n-n-o-f-t to Austrailia for to slake the wanderlust.  This woman gives me snacks all day.  Literally.  And she's always talking about how cute I am.  Yeah, yeah, I hear your surprised laughter.  I'll have you know that many old women here consider me cu--  Stop laughing!  Also, the principal always give me drinks, alcoholic and non.  

But, man...I guess nothing's really started happening at this school.  Meh.

On the bright side, I get four days off starting tomorrow!

Also, here's lunch!

That is ramen, a fried spring roll, something they call "colorful salad", milk and jello (pineapple soda flavored).

Later, people.

J