28 - Pre-Christmas

I’m looking down at my diary and I see it’s been a couple of months since I last wrote anything here. So, better get to it. There’s a fair amount to talk about. Having said that, I am sick. Chances are a lot of what I type down is going to be only half thought out, and the other half is going to be semi-delusional nonsense. Please forgive any fever dreams that creep into this writing.

So let’s start off with the earliest big events, the elementary music festival. A quick glance at my last blog post tells me that the larger school festival was the next day, so I doubt there’s anything before that. This was the first time that I’d gone along to this school’s festival, just on account of not being able to before, and Steph was kind enough to come along with. It was interesting having a second set of eyes, an unknowing pair of eyes, on both schools so she could compare them. So, let’s see. The school went in a completely mixed order of school years, starting with 4, then 1, 5, 2, 3 and finally 6. Impressive stuff, and doubly so when you take into account that this school is much more massive than its smaller cousin down the road. Four classes in each year, each class with about thirty-five kids. There was barely enough room on the stage, and there was no way the school was going to split up a year group. Time constraints, y’know? So instead they had to make the whole thing a bit more interesting by adding little dance numbers on the back rows and routines involving streamers. Cute stuff. Second years did an English song medley, which they pulled off very well. Pronunciation really blew me away. I mean, I bet they had no idea what they were singing half the time, and they’ve probably forgotten it all by now, but it was still an amazing bit of memorization. I was surprised, though, that the third years were doing international songs as well, including a song from England. Or rather, a song in an ‘English style’. I guess… it sounded kinda Celtic. But it wasn’t familiar. Well, I have faith that the teachers did their research first. Sixth years played Holst’s Jupiter, which was pretty epic. You gotta go epic at sixth year, or you ain’t nuthin’. They also did the little ‘this is our last music festival so see ya’ song at the end, and once more did not cry. Maybe we’re just breeding an apathetic generation of kids, or something. Last years’ cried like babies.

Okay, so here’s the criticism. The place was packed when we got there, and though there were places to sit we decided our gaijin girth might irritate some of the shorter, older members of the audience. So, we stood at the back. No problem, I’ve stood for longer before. It’s just… the second, the second, the first group of kids finished and made their exit, their parents made their exit as well. There was this sudden rush from the seats as mums and dads got to their feet and pushed out the emergency exit. You see that sorta thing in UK primary school events? I sure haven’t. The whole thing came off as very rude, like they were blowing off all the hundreds of other kids who tried really hard to get their performances down, but because they weren’t blood related they weren’t worth the time. Only then I noticed that more people were coming into the sports hall as the others left, and after a bit of maths I realized that there was no way, no way, that all the parents of all the kids were getting into that hall. My new theory is that the parents were asked to leave when their kids were finished, so as to make space for the next batch. It looks rude, but I guess it was necessary. Also, you’d have to go home and then come right back again at the end to pick up your kids, which seems a bit silly. But the big thing that really got me was that it took so-o-o-o much time to funnel everybody out and pump a new unit in like some kinda elementary school parent distillery. People, and people in Japan so much more so, are quite good at taking instructions on their own, but in a herd it’s like their brains all get mushed together into something that doesn’t look like a brain anymore, and you can call out at them ‘Please leave via the emergency exit doors!’ all you like and they won’t move because the pretty pictures in their head are just so distracting. What’s that Tommy Lee Jones quote from Men in Black? ‘A person is intelligent. People are (dumb).’ I don’t remember, he said it a lot better than that. And that’s why he’s the face of Boss coffee, the Boss of them all. So ask me to stand for an hour forty-five, I say no problem. You got it. But standing through an elementary school recital is just so much easier than standing through long, long minutes of watching cattle bump into each other and squeeze through small gaps with all the fussy entitlement of an Oscar winner on the red carpet. My feet hurt after the first two hours. My poor feet.

Okay, I’m done with that. Got a bit spiteful, there. Gotta watch the old spite.

Moving swiftly along to the Skills Development Conference, which was very good. Very good, actually. I can normally put these conferences down to being a passable use of time – more effective than sitting around at my desk but less fun than, say, Summer School or… Skyrim. But I was quite thoroughly interested by this year’s. One talk was from a friend of mine on bringing your culture into mid-level elementary lessons, and it was ace. Some truly inspired ideas outta that one. And the other one was by this, wow, such a stud. He was handsome, charming and witty, and he made the best quiz on Japanese pop culture that I’d e-

Oh, wait, that was me.

This was my second time presenting at an SDC, first time solo, and I did certainly enjoy it. I can’t claim that my talk broke new boundaries in the education system, nor sent people away with messianic levels of inspiration, nor was even particularly well-made. But I like to think it was enjoyed. At least there was that much. The afternoon of the SDC was to be spent at another junior high school for most of the ALTs, gathered in the hall in their hundreds around a model classroom full of terrified junior highschoolers wondering why were there so many foreigners in this room with them watching them judging them and if they suddenly turned feral could we take them in a fight cos I don’t think so…! I saw the pictures. Because I was back at my own school, doing an observation class of my own with any of the teachers in our block of school who wanted to come and watch. The class went, eh, alright. Usually kids respond to the addition of guests by trying to be on their best behaviour, for some reason. God bless ‘em. But class 1-1 didn’t really change that much and that was probably because nobody turned up to watch my class!! All that preparation and fear!! For nothing!! Ah, okay, that’s an exaggeration. I think three people stuck their heads in for the briefest of moments before wondering off down towards the sounds of a DVD player being plugged in. We never really grow up, do we? But it still hurt.

After the class, with a headache coming on, I was shuffled off to the computer room with all the guests to listen to a talk from a language professor from Osaka University talk about group dynamics in the classroom. Here’s a classic example of bizarre Japanese society: The computer room had been modified with these long desks to accommodate guests, two rows of them with three seats behind each. Now, it ends up being a lot like urinals, and this I’m sure is true all over the world. You wanna sit on an end seat if you’re first there, so that the next person to come isn’t forced to sit next to you, which they may not want to do if they don’t know you so well. So when I came in and sat myself at the back I got to watch as teachers filed in, some talking amicably, and chose their seats. Know what happened? They all chose different desks to sit at. Every single one, on a different desk. Crammed right at the end as though we were giving them no choice. Maybe not so strange so far, I know. But here’s the kicker. The second the last desk got filled… sorry, ‘filled’, by a single teacher, there was a flurry of panic from my host teachers who dashed to the closest classroom and set up new desks at the back of classroom!! Why?! Whyyy?! And to top it all off, they had the nerve to complain that they hadn’t expected there to be such a rush!! Are you actually kidding?! A rush, when two thirds of the seats are not taken?! In uni, one of the Japanese culture speeches we had from our forth-year sempai was on amaeru, which is kinda like being spoilt. Well, here ya go. Living example of adults being spoilt as children and then growing up equally spoilt.

So anyway, we had this talk, and I think I managed to keep up for the first ten minutes or so. She made some genuinely interesting points, about how showing a united teacher front where everyone gets on with each other is good motivation for the students to try and do the same, but eventually I just collapsed under the weight of it all. That, and knowing that all my friends would have finished their own work and be off to the Hub for a pint by now, while I was stuck in an overheated room listening to a talk that I was finding increasingly difficult to follow. Irritation soon turned to anger as the speech became something of an anecdote corner featuring her ‘funny’ students. Later that night I caught up with my school’s music teacher at the cafeteria-style restaurant near home, and he commented on how funny she’d been. I said that I hadn’t thought so on account of not understanding her ultra-fast, mile-thick Osaka dialect. A half-truth, one I will admit to publically. The other half was that I was well beyond the point of caring, well beyond. I was hungry, I had a headache, and I was miserable. I could try to justify why I felt like that some more, but I don’t think I have the right. It was Friday night, I had a busy day the next day and I just wanted to go home. Eventually I did.

So, moving on, the weekend. The next day was English Festival, a relatively new event split off from Summer School. This year was the second attempt at EngFes, which was built around a speech contest revelling in the glory of Kobe City. Figured a new topic would be nice this year, but whatevs. Eleven schools were taking part, with groups ranging from pairs up to the international school’s colossal twenty-strong group. International school, you say? I say, that doesn’t sound very fair! And no, you’d be right. This year, the two international schools were invited along, but only as special guest stars to try and bring them closer to the public schools. Didn’t… really work. I mean, they could have done with letting the schools know that they weren’t in the running for a prize before they arrived. Just one more reason why I’m not working at city hall. We’d been told that the idea behind EngFes wasn’t the naming and shaming of schools with poor English records, but rather the celebrating of as many kids’ participation as possible. This meant that there were six representatives giving out a prize each, from the Board of Education, to us ALTs, to the international schools. That’s over a 50% chance of winning a prize if all other factors were equal, which is great but I don’t care because my school won one!! Yeah!! Got a crunk certificate!! Got a dope picture to hang on the wall!! Boo-yah! So yes, we were pretty thrilled about it. To my knowledge, our school’s never really gone in for extra-curricular English in any form before now, so this was a big victory for us. The kids did really exceptionally well, and I’m exceedingly proud of what they achieved. Here’s hoping they keep this up into next year.

Which gets me up to date with work. December’s been quiet, what with the end of term and all. Weather’s rotten, so everyone’s feeling the holidays now. This week’s classes have pretty much all been Mr Bean. Dat guy, man. Cross-cultural comedy. A lot of free time, which leaves me free to fret about travelling.

I do hate travelling. Everybody be all like, it’s not the destination it’s the journey that’s the most important. But living in this world of visas and stuffy planes and 1984 border guards it feels to me like that saying doesn’t hold water in a literal sense any more. Take this Christmas. I’m going to Seattle, which I love, but to get there I have to take a long-haul plane, which I hate. Maybe if the extent of my travelling was hopping on a horse and riding the mountain paths from Whiterun to Falkreath I’d like it more. That’s the second Skyrim reference today, and I hope that lets you know what else I’ve been spending my time on. Been reading Look to Windward by Banks lately, and there was nice quote there. It went something like, People realise that the journey, rather than the destination, if not granting fulfilment, grants us a break from feeling like we should be fulfilled. Clever, clever stuff.

But I don’t even have it that bad. Steph’s organizing a marriage visa for our wedding in the UK. You imagine you tough that is? Very, is the answer. It’s very tough. And the Osaka consulate is spreading their arms wide and proudly revealing to us just how little they know about anything. It’s a tough road. Urgh, thinking about the wedding is a sure-fire way of getting me down, y’know. All that planning… all those stupid little details… I gotta get over it, I know, and realise that as co-host of the event I’m allowed to let it go any way I want. No guests? No problem. But for now, let me fret.

Let’s talk about something more positive. Andy’s also getting married, which is excellent news, and takes the pressure off me somewhat. Really looking forward to seeing him in New Zealand at New Years. Also looking forward to dem Steam sales. Despite all that talk of Skyrim, I haven’t been playing so much this month. Starbound came out earlier in the month, and Steph and I have been spending hours digging ores, plundering tombs and blasting penguins with machine guns. It’s living up to the hype so far, as being an early-access game we’re getting new additions every week. Bliss.

And, that’s it. Headache. Tired. Still sick. I’ll see you all later.

Merry Christmas. Thanks for reading.