A Minor Landmark

The Year 6 class at Fukuwatari Elementary, the class that has given me so much grief for the past year, whose enthusiasm has always been conspicuous by its absence, have had their last English lesson. I have finished with my worst class (out of the 21 I teach), and with probably my best lesson with them too. See, this class has been a model for the problems of year 6 classes in general; basically, they're old enough to be quite self-conscious about how they appear, particularly to their peers. Hence they are far less willing to participate than younger kids, and are fairly careful about not standing out from the others. In this class, that means no volunteers, no hands raised to answer questions, complete silence at lunch time, and fits of giggles when the English teacher (me) tries to interact.
Today's lesson worked because I let them just enjoy games that didn't require any interference from me, and didn't require them to stand out individually. First, we played a basic matching game to make random groups. Then, we played an ingenious version of Uno devised by one of my JTEs. In this version, instead of following a red 7 with another red card or a different-coloured 7, the cards each have a word, and you follow the previous card with one that follows logically to make a sentence. Technically, these kids can't read English, so we kept it simple; a "do" card was followed by "you," then "like," then "cheese" (or whatever), then "?". To my complete shock, they loved it! We followed that with Snakes & Ladders (home-made boards with a question or a word to translate on each square), with also worked reasonably well.
So the Class of Suck is no more. In a little over a month, they'll be divided between 1A and 1B at junior high, they'll be knocked off their "kings/queens of the school" perch, and I won't have to deal with those 25 grumpy little buggers again. I can't wait.

Bunnies: Now With Added Poisonous Gases!!

Last Saturday, Rich and I took a trip to Okunoshima, a small island in the Inland Sea, in Hiroshima-ken. This charming little island's attractions are three-fold: mobs of friendly, adorable bunnies; some crumbling ruins; and a poison gas museum.
That's right, a posion gas museum.
See, during the war, Okunoshima housed facilities for producing various poisonous gases to be used in combat; hence the museum. The ruins are those of storage rooms, a power plant, and other bits and bobs associated with those gases. And the bunnies? Well, they fullfilled their fourth most-popular occupation (behind being adorable pets, ravaging the flora and fauna of Australia, and being eaten) by being test subjects for said poison gases. It all makes for a delightfully strange environment.

On arrival at the island, one disembarks from the dinky little ferry, and is immediately greeted by a dozen or so perfect bunnies, who happily trot towards the newly-arrived humans in the hope of a few pieces of lettuce or carrot. Of course, these lovely lagomorphs are only here because of their ancestry as test subjects for weapons of war, so it's... kinda weird, I suppose. We were also not expecting to see so many bunnies just hopping around on their own; being Japan, I at least expected a designated bunny-viewing area, vending machines of bunny food, and muzak piped through the island's woods. Similarly, I expected the ruins of the gas-making-facilities to be propped up with boardwalks, guided tours conducted by flag-wielding air hostesses, and perhaps a purikura booth or two. But no; shockingly, the remains of the facilities have remained completely untouched - abandoned in the 1940s and left to crumble on their own. As such, they're great to explore, covered in vines, cobwebs, and dark corners. The only restriction is a strong advisory to not actually wander inside the ruins of the power plant, just in case it, you know, collapses on your head or something. The remains of the island's power plant

Storage rooms, built into the earth like hobbit holes, presumably to avoid being seen from the air.

A gorgeous view, of which the Inland Sea has many.

Okunoshima summed up in one photo: bunnies and ruins.

Of Rain and Bumcracks

This was about as much as I saw of the Naked Man Festival on Saturday night. It rained, and it rained, and it continued to rain. Nevertheless, weather aside, the festival was a success (as in, our organization of a trip to it was).

Eric and I took charge of the bus for the participants. I was surprised that there were so many guys from other prefectures, and so few from our own. The only familiar faces were Kevin, Rene, Herb, Haka-Dave, Vasco, Wayne and Ludo. That these particular men chose to join in the madness did not surprise me at all. That bus certainly filled its quota of testosterone, and we enjoyed a drunken, rowdy bus ride there. Once we arrived in Saidaiji, we managed to lead our gaggle of gaijin to the temple and get them dressed (well, undressed, mostly) without any hassle, which was pretty surprising considering more than a few of those blokes were already pretty much tanked before we even got there.

Now, as the guy who was meant to be in charge of these guys, helping them out, showing them who to pay and what they needed and such, I had the privilege of hanging out in the Naked Tent without having to get naked myself. It was a right old laugh. For an image to make you giggle at any time, try this one: a line of naked men, holding white cloths over their bits, watching with trepidation as another man has his cloth tied around him in such a way as to protect his bits, peaking with a colossal yanking of said cloth up said man’s bumcrack. Hil-A-ri-ous.

An hour after we arrived, the busloads of gaijin spectators arrived right on cue. We milled around in the rain and appreciated the posing of a few gaijin participants in their fundoshi (read: sacred nappies). Amy failed to resist the urge to poke one such fellow in the arse with a kebab stick.

As we stood around in the rain, mostly-naked men marched past in teams into the temple. Eventually, we moved there ourselves to watch the madness. However, thanks to the rain and the inevitable mass of umbrellas, no-one saw anything much. A friendly foreigner saw me straining on my tiptoes and offered to hoist me up on his shoulders, which I did, and managed a good view for a few minutes. Alas, that was all I was to see, and the festival came to its conclusion, not a minute too soon for those of us who had been standing in the rain for the past three hours.

We made it back into the city, feeling rather cold, wet and miserable, though I mustered up the energy to go to the Aussie Bar (as per usual) to kill the remaining four hours before the first bus home. The bar was ridiculously full, and was surely breaking all kinds of fire regulations, but oh well. Afterwards, I was introduced to Okayama’s only 24-hour café. Why did I not know of this place before?

So, the trip to the festival was a success, though I doubt anyone actually enjoyed the festival very much. There were a few promises of participation at next year’s event, and I will make sure that those promises come through, though I won’t be here. Nevertheless, it shall be so. I decree it!

I don't know whose bums these are, hence I don't need permission to show them to the world. Result!

Video of the week!

This one is Reptilia by The Strokes. It's basically extreme close-ups of the band, all edited very snappily. There's never more than one hand or head in each shot. Julian Casblancas pulls some fun faces. He's also wearing a gold watch, which may or may not be significant.

Let's Indulgence...

In honour of the foundation of this nation (and its associated holiday), Richard and I spent a long weekend in Osaka. We saved money by taking the bus, but otherwise it was a weekend of spending and fabulousness.
We arrived at lunchtime on Saturday, and promptly had lunch at - quite shockingly - Richard's first ever sushi train. From there we checked into our hotel, which was fabulous simply for being an actual hotel, not a hostel dorm, capsule, or scungy tatami room. After ooing and aahing at the prospect of having a half-decent room for a while, we made a beeline for Spa World.
Spa World is meant to be the world's largest bath complex or somesuch. It's a sort of Disneyland of onsen; the bulk of it is taken up by two floors of themed baths - the European zone and the Asian zone. Each zone has several themed areas within it, for example, the European zone has baths modelled on Finland, Rome, Greece, and Atlantis (which doesn't exist yet is European?). This month, the men (ie us) get the Europe zone, the women the Asia zone, and next month the genders swap, so we'll have to visit again in March. Check out their website for some snazzy photos. It's brilliant fun, quite ridiculous, and of course, thoroughly Japanese.
Hence thoroughly onsenned, we moved up to Umeda, where we had a disappointing dinner at one of the department store restaurants (though we did get to enjoy Kirin Black - why does hardly anywhere sell the tasty dark varieties?), and then hit up Osaka's rainbow side at a couple of bars. We were the only patrons at the first bar, Physique, which has a lovely, chatty bartender with a fondness for Kylie. The second bar had plenty of Japanese folks and a rather annoying bartender who looked like a ferret. We contributed to the karaoke with Total Eclipse of the Heart (not my choice). This promptly put me in a mood, and we immediately departed for a two-hour karaoke session for two.
On Sunday, we shopped. We shopped and did little else, besides frequent coffee stops. All I bought was some hair wax, Colgate (foreign toothpaste, hurrah!!) and tea-tree oil face wash, which we decided smelled like Australia, and hence was a good thing. We spent a while wandering the streets of Amerika Mura in search of gaijin-sized clothes. Gaijin sizes were lacking, but the Mura is certainly great fun for people-watching. Actually, that should be "fashion-victim watching." Later, back in Daimaru, we did find Richard a rather snazzy jacket and shirt ensemble, and we returned to our hotel to snazz it up for the evening.
Freshly snazzed, we had dinner in Namba, the wandered the arcades for the Baskin Robbins we had seen earlier. We did find it, eventually - five minutes after it had closed. Tragic. So we moved on to the Pig & Whistle to drown our ice-cream-lacking-sorrows in a pint or two of Kilkenny. And who do we meet right inside the door? None other than Wayne and Dawn! You're really never far from home, are you?
On Sunday, we hung about in Namba, waiting for our bus. We marvelled at the plastic samples and gigantic knives in Dogusuji-ya (Osaka's restaurant supply arcade), made up for missing Baskin Robbins the night before, and made use of a half-decent bookstore, where I found a new Frank McCourt book and a new collection of National Geographic photography.
Osaka is great for a weekend trip, and a bit of indulgence. I could never spend more than a few days at a time there, though; for all its attractions, it is not an attractive place, it's desperately lacking parkland, and I can not help but spend more than I should whilst there.

I think I just got a pay cut

There was a discussion with my Jicho (now the boss of our BOE) involving lots of pointing at figures on a calculator, and "Okayama-shi ni nattara..." (since becoming Okayama-shi). I think my salary shrunk a little since the merger. We (JETs) all get the same salary before tax, but local taxes differ a little, so maybe Okayama-shi has bigger resident's taxes than Takebe did?
Either way, no ivory back-scratcher for me, then.

Hyper-sensitivity a go-go

The grammar for today's 2nd grade lesson was "[blank] is as [blank] as." I had made an activity in which students measured each other's height and then wrote comparisons, as in "I am as tall as Chihiro," "Takahiro is taller than Ikuo" or whatever. My team-teaching partner approved this activity. I printed the worksheets.
Later, my colleague approached me to ask if we could change the activity a little. She was worried that my activity would upset the short kids. Would it be okay to change it to older/younger, rather than taller/shorter?
Well, sure, we can change it, if you don't mind wasting 50 sheets of paper for the sake of a minor change in the name of some imagined hypersensitivity. Goodness. Perhaps if my topic was actually controversial, like "I am as fanatical as" or "I am as much of an orphan as" but height? Goodness.
Perhaps I'm overanalysing the situation but... in case a student does have an issue about his height, should we (as teachers) not teach that physical qualities don't matter? Who cares if you're short? The message should be "no-one cares if you are shorter than everyone else," rather than "let's avoid discussing anything height-related when Kazuki's around."
Anyway. I was pissed at wasting so much paper, is all.

My town has died.

Well, the growth rates would suggest it was dying anyway, but my little Takebe has officially died. Ceased to exist. It was eaten by the hulking beast that is Okayama-shi about a fortnight ago.Luckily, my day-to-day life is unlikely to meet any great changes; I'm not moving into ChampClair with the other city JETs, and the waste disposal system still sucks in its lack of recycling. But there are several small changes that I've noticed.
1. I now receive the monthly magazine for residents of Okayama-shi. The first issue celebrates the city's invasion of Takebe and Seto.
2. My BOE boss became obsolete and abruptly retired, leaving me his office computer. This is a big step up, as my previous office computer was on Windows 98 (98!), had no USB port, didn't recognise CD-Rs, and took about 15 minutes to start up.
3. My office is strangely bare; a lot of the piles of folders and paperwork, and most of the stuff on the walls, has vanished.
4. Our lunch hour has been shortened from an hour to 45 minutes, in line with other city employees.
5. Our tea/coffee cupboard and urn has been moved into the storage room. We can't be seen having beverages on the job, perhaps?
6. The other BOE staff now answer the phone with "Okayama-shi board of education, Takebe branch." They still keep getting it wrong and have to correct themselves, even when receiving a call from one of my schools.
7. Every part of town once had a small sign like "Fukuwatari, Takebe-cho," or "Kawaguchi, Takebe-cho." These have been replaced with "Fukuwatari, Takebe-cho, Okayama-shi" and so forth.
8. Road signs have changed from "Okayama 30km" to "Central Okayama 30km." Because, you're already in Okayama-shi! Get it?


One of the English teachers had an interesting theory for why Okayama wanted to take over Takebe and Seto (another town with the same story of absorption). In Japan, cities exceeding a certain population (I think the ones termed as "designated cities") are given certain special rights, especially in having greater autonomy unto themselves in civil matters. So, Okayama wants to boost its population to the magic threshold (700,000 maybe?) to become a "designated city." Still, even if that is the reason, I doubt that Takebe's six thousand people would make a great difference in boosting Okayama's population. You could probably fit Takebe in one big housing estate. Why not absorb Kurashiki instead?
The reasoning is likely to be the opposite of population growth; Takebe is shrinking, and I guess it's just to small to operate as an independent Local Government Area. According to the free "Takebe: 40 years" book I received, the population was 8,838 in 1970, compared to 6,524 in 2005. Even worse, the number of children (14 years and under) has dropped from 1,759 in 1970 to 705 in 2005. Indeed, pre-merge, Takebe was the smallest LGA in Okayama. Everything else had already been eaten up by Niimi-shi, Tsuyama-shi, Takahashi-shi and the rest.

It's too bad, 'cause it's a nice little town, and I its far less interesting to be living in Okayama-shi, if by technicality.
Still, as long as they don't make me move into ChampClair, it's all good.