Specific Nostalgia

As I depart my dear, darling students (well, most of them were dear darlings. Some were mischievous monsters) and beloved teachers and friends, I feel emotionally drained. The last two weeks I have spent in a whirlwind of rapid goodbyes and hopes to meet again in the future as I parted from those who have earned spots in my heart.

I have learned so much from my students and Japanese friends. If at any moment, which there have been some, I thought “man, my time here was not worthwhile,” all I had to do was look at the stack of letters written to me by my students thanking me for teaching them. Some students simply said they enjoyed my lessons and my singing, and others expressed their deepest gratitude and assured me that they would never forget me. The latter letters brought tears to my eyes almost every time.

Of course, it will be sad. Yet, I also feel a bit relieved as working as a teacher was NOT easy. Part of me feels like Frodo when he’s talking to Sam at the end of The Lord of the Rings and says “it’s gone, it’s done.” Okay, okay. Perhaps it is a bit hyperbolic to compare the end of a teaching job to throwing a cursed ring into the fires of Mordor, but I often have a flare for the dramatic, in case you haven’t noticed.

On my last couple of days here, I noticed that I started feeling nostalgic about far too specific of things. Saying to myself “wow, this is the last time I will ever walk to school,” or “I can’t believe this will be my last meal in the Indian restaurant where I spent many a night during my time in Japan,” is a completely normal thing to do in my emotional situation. However, all of a sudden, I realized that I began having these “wow, this is my last time” thoughts about even tiny details. While I was at the gym, I thought, “wow, this is the last time I will ever use this exact workout machine here.” Instead of the more general idea that it would be my last time in the gym.

I made myself chuckle at thinking of just HOW specific I could get with it. “Aw, sad, this is the last time I will be standing in line waiting to buy hand warmers at the random Japanese drug store near the sushi restaurant at exactly 8:16 at night, so sad!” Or, “I just might cry, it’s my last time biking in the cold when one of my headphones fell out of my ear because I hit the bump on the sidewalk at the wrong angle right next to the Pizza Hut, aww man!” Or finally, “here come the tears… this is my last time seeing the man who sometimes walks his Chihuahua outside of my apartment and always stops right under that tree so he can blow his nose and his dog can pee… I’m so emotional!”

Okay, okay. Maybe my nostalgia hasn't gotten to just such a specific point just yet. But as my time in Ageo ticks down to hours instead of days, I may find my mind going there.  

Leaving Ageo also fills me with excitement for the next part of my journey. I can’t wait to spend some time in Tokyo touring around and doing some things that were on my list of “must-do” things in Japan before taking off for Thailand. Tea ceremonies, Disneyland, and the Tokyo Skytree are calling, and who am I to ignore the call of adventure? (What a weird English saying, “who am I to…” Like, how do you respond to that?).

Youths!

I consider myself a morning person, as long as I’ve gone through my AM ritual of drinking at least one cup of coffee and eating my granola while sifting through the various stories in the news. I consider myself to be a morning person not necessarily because I am particularly bubbly or vivacious in the wee hours of the day, but because I enjoy them. I love sunrises, I love the newness associated with the fresh, pure early hours, and I love morning activities such as the aforementioned. However, like I said, it doesn't mean I radiate enviable amounts of energy at the start of the day.

My students at the junior high school, however, are another story entirely. Whereas it takes me a good quarter of the day to actually wake up and feel like a human being, they scamper up and down the halls of the school like Energizer bunnies on mass amounts of amphetamines from the moment they enter the building. I have never seen any of them at the second they wake up (how creepy would it be if I had?) but I imagine they spring out from under their covers with the same zeal for life they possess all day long. 

I wish I could borrow just one tiny bit of their constant energy. I used to be confused as to how they could eat such gigantic school lunches until I witnessed the sheer amount of activity they go through on a day-to-day basis. First they walk to school. Then many of them jog around the track. Then they spend all day in class, and in between periods they run boisterously up and down the halls, screaming at their friends or at least chatting animatedly. Then they chow down an unimaginable amount of food, which makes me feel like Jabba the Hut after eating just half of what they do, and then rush around and visit with their friends again. The students are just a whirlwind of activity at all moments, which is exhausting just to behold. 

After half the day is over, it seems as though they haven’t spent a single ounce of energy. Following lunch, they go to two more classes, spend a half hour cleaning the school, and then go to their after school activities. A few hours after practicing their chosen sport, they walk home, often up to a mile. Then they study, study, study and sleep. Whew. That made me tired just writing about it. Ah, to be young again… 

Black Friday Lesson

I’m seldom proud enough of my lesson plans to feel the need to share them through my blog. Generally, my ideas are slightly-altered versions of ESL activities that I find online or ideas shared with me by other teachers. However, the activity I came up with for today was entirely my own, and rather creative in my oh-so-humble opinion.

I couldn't for the life of me come up with a creative Thanksgiving lesson plan. Crap, one came to me just now, I could have had the kids plan a menu for an imaginary turkey dinner. Oh well. I digress…

I decided to give up on Thanksgiving all together, but I came up with a rather genius plan. I figured that most of my students would have at least heard of Thanksgiving, but I assumed (correctly, I later discovered) that not of them knew about Black Friday. And because the world isn’t full enough of consumers as it is (I hope you all detect the sarcasm in that statement), I figured I should spread the knowledge and focus my lesson plan on teaching my students how to shop.

Don’t worry, I didn’t bypass Thanksgiving completely. I showed them pictures of the holiday and explained the history in the simplest terms possible. Then came the main event. I printed out pages and pages of Black Friday advertisements from this year and passed them out to the students. The objective was for the students to make a list of whom they needed to buy Christmas presents for, look though the ads, and choose a present for each person. Then they needed to formulate sentences using the pattern: I will buy a (gift) for (recipient of gift). It is on sale for (price). At the end, they needed to add all of the prices together to determine their budget for Black Friday shopping.

Anyways, the most enjoyable part for me stemmed from my asking them to choose a present for me. Looking through their papers and grading them has seldom been more amusing for me. The students who quickly made it into a prime spot at the top of the list of my favourites were the ones who planned to buy me cameras, laptops, and other fancy goods. I worried initially when one student said he would buy me a Playstation 4 controller, as I don’t have a Playstation to control with it. I breathed a sigh of relief, however, when one of the other students wrote that she would buy me a Playstation. Along with a Playstation, my students plan to buy me three iPhones, five cameras, about 20 sets of headphones, an electric scooter, three TVs, an iPad air, a new suitcase, and diamond earrings. 

I guess I shouldn't have corrected this student. She IS buying me a TV, after all...

Interspersed with those awesome choices were some head scratchers including an air mattress, a hockey table, a clock, and a trampoline. One kid decided he would get me a waffle maker. Another plans to buy me some Tupperware. Another kid figured I really needed an HDMI cable, and another thought I’d want some new Sharpie markers. Whatever, those kids get points for making me laugh.

Number 3. 

Too bad this is all imaginary…

One kid made me laugh out loud awkwardly in the silent teacher’s room when I read the comment he wrote. Please read his answer to "How much will you spend on Black Friday?"

I'm Cold

Yep, I understand the ominous foreboding from everyone regarding the oncoming cold. The cold is no longer oncoming; it is here. And it sucks.

In complete and total honesty, it isn’t that cold outside. It climbs up to about 50 degrees during the sunny part of the day, and then dips to 30 or 40 at night. It could be a lot worse. The challenging part is the lack of heating in Japanese buildings.

At school, warmth and colour are constantly absent from my hands. The same goes for my face, always void of colour. I have to drink coffee or tea at all times to ward off shivering fits making me look like a living maraca. Sometimes I do dishes in the kitchen just to enjoy the feeling of warm water cascading over my skin.

The major head scratcher for me is that the school always leaves the windows open. I really can’t for the life of me understand the reasoning behind this action. Because of this, at times it is warmer outside than in.

I would have abandoned the gym entirely if not for the promise of five hot tubs and a sauna awaiting me there after my workout. The internal heat generated by the workouts alone is motivation enough to keep moving by any means necessary. I ride my bike about ten times faster now just to stay warm.

I honestly can’t figure it out, though. Even when it isn’t that cold outside, it feels like it is a Siberian, frozen wasteland to me. I wear the same hat, scarf, gloves and boots as I do in Colorado, but somehow they seem a powerless defense against the frigid air here. Maybe the Japanese wind and air have a mystical ability to render American winter wear useless. That is the only logical answer, really.

Fruit? Vegetable?

I knew that there would be a problem teaching my special education class this week the instant I laid eyes on the worksheet that the head teacher wanted me to use. It sounds simple: he wanted to test the understanding of the students by giving them a worksheet depicting many fruits and vegetables and having them circle the answers when I say, for example, “red fruits.”

I started panicking a bit when I saw that tomatoes were one of the items of produce from which they could select. Crap. If I were to say “circle the red fruits,” would I have to count it wrong if they omitted the tomato? If I say “brown vegetables” and they circle the mushroom would I count it wrong because a mushroom is not a vegetable, but a fungus? What definition did the teacher want me to use? Culinary classification, which considers whether something is a fruit or a vegetable based on taste, or botanical classification, which defines a fruit as an edible plant containing seeds?

I’m about to go a bit Bill Nye on all of you. It’s time, once and for all, for us to understand what makes a fruit a fruit. According to livescience.com, a fruit is “a seed-bearing structure that develops from the ovary of a flowering plant, whereas vegetables are all other plant parts, such as roots, leaves and stems.” So, technically, olives, eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and pumpkins are all fruits. FRUITS!

However, the above only applies if you just want to follow the botanical definition. If you want to go with the culinary definition, things that taste sweet are considered fruits, and things that taste savory, like the aforementioned botanical fruits peppers, eggplants and pumpkins, are vegetables. On the flipside, rhubarb is a botanical vegetable but a culinary fruit. Confused yet?

Here’s a little history/law lesson for you, too. When deciding whether tomatoes should be taxed as a fruit or a vegetable, the Supreme Court elected to consider them a vegetable because that is “standard” and “common.” I wonder how eggplants and olives are taxed…

Well, in the end, I decided to just say “orange fruit” for which they could only circle the orange. I was immensely thankful that the worksheet’s creator didn't decide to depict a pumpkin, too, or I would have felt even more lost and confused.

But... WHAT IS A FRUIT!?

Grandpa and I Stole My Bike

Before I can get into the crazy adventure involving dashing around my town with a locked bike, I will provide a bit of necessary background information. Last Sunday, someone took my coat from the gym. This wouldn't have been a huge deal if my bike and apartment keys weren't in the pocket. But alas, they were. So, thankfully, one of the coordinators who works for my company came and saved me. We got me a spare key from the apartment office, a process which was relatively painless. The bike situation, however, proved to be a bit more complicated.

Many bikes in Japan, including mine, have locks attached to the back tire. When you lock it, it induces a sort of bike rigour mortis, preventing the back tire from moving and the kickstand from being lifted.

The little round thing under the seat on the rear tire is the lock

I live about a mile away from the gym, so the thought of toting a partially immobilised bike all the way there sounded painful to say the least. However, leaving it at the gym overnight was not possible either, so the coordinator and I hoisted it into the trunk of her car and drove it back to my apartment. I'm pretty sure whoever saw us thought we were pulling a grand-theft bicycle. Oh well.

I realised after just one day how much longer it takes to walk everywhere when you are used to biking. All of a sudden, journeys everywhere seemed like voyages to Mordor. So, I decided I needed to get the lock situation taken care of. Along with my coordinator, three others helped me make my bike rideable again, and if people in Japan hugged, they would have all gotten one from me for their amazing collective effort.

1) The Vice Principal at my school. Of course. He is my superman. A few days after the theft of my bike key, he asked how I was and I explained that I was a bit distressed. At that point I realised that the coat robber wouldn't be returning it.

When I told the VP what happened, he banged his fist on the desk and said, with the kind of conviction I would expect from a judge reading the verdict of a grisly murder case, "Marisa. This is not ok. Japan should be safe place. Japan must apologise!" And he told me that I must take the bike to the bike shop to get the lock cut off, and that this would cost about $10.

He said he would try to drive me when his schedule was clear, but we couldn't seem to find a convenient time for both of us so I said I would walk it to the bike shop, no big deal. He then reached into his desk and produced a nice, fancy bike lock and said "Marisa, I present you this. Then, no need buy new lock." Wow, I was speechless with gratitude. It also piqued my curiosity as to how he magically always has whatever I need in his desk.

He then informed me that next week he will take me to an Indian curry lunch as a further apology from Japan. Despite my assurance that I was not mad at Japan and such kindness was unnecessary, he insisted.

2) My new Japanese Grandfather. So, finally, I decided that enough was enough. I needed to just suck it up and walk my heavy bike to the shop. I will say that walking a half mile lugging a heavy bike with immobilised wheels is easily one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I paused every ten minutes or so to change my arm positions and take a breather. Once again, I am sure that everyone who saw me thought that I looked insane and that I was stealing a bike.

This is mine, I swear!

When I was about halfway to the shop, an elderly man approached me and asked me in Japanese if I was okay. He then began talking rapidly in Japanese and asking me questions and I just kept saying that I was okay because I didn't understand him. Eventually, he jaunted off ahead of me.

About fifteen minutes later, the bike shop was finally in sight. So was the same elderly man, who was rushing towards me again. He looked extremely worried, and informed me that the bike shop, my destination that seemed so within reach at last, was already closed. My heart sank. I tried to explain to him that I would still walk my bike to the shop and come back tomorrow, but he didn't understand a word. He was determined to help me, and refused to leave me stranded.

Finally, a metaphorical lightbulb appeared over his head. He pointed across the street at a bike parking lot beside an apartment building and I nodded in agreement- it looked like a nice place to leave a bike. So we decided to jaywalk my bike across the street. I tried to help him as he took the bike from me, and he insisted that he could carry it himself. So this little, 70-plus-year-old-man lugged my locked bike across the road, dodging cars, and we parked it among the other bikes. I thanked him profusely and asked him name, and he said simply "Ojiisan" ("Grandpa" in Japanese). He then told me to take care and walked off into the distance and out of my life.

3) The bike shop owner. The next morning, I rushed back to where Grandpa and I left my bike. There is was, safe and sound. I walked it over to the bike shop, where the owner got out a set of hedge-clippers that looked like they could sever the strongest metal in half. He clipped off the lock and I asked him in my terrible Japanese how much it would cost. He waved off the notion and insisted that it was "daijoubu" ("okay") and that he was happy to do it. I told him "I'm so happy!" in Japanese, thanked him profusely, and, FINALLY pedalled off to the station.

That's a happier ending than many Disney films, in my opinion.

The Backstreet Boys GET Me

In Greek mythology, the gods control the lives of the pathetic, puny humans and determine what will occur in their life journeys. Over the course of the past couple days, I felt like the person the gods decided to pick on to throw obstacle after obstacle at for their own enjoyment. It seemed like every tiny thing went wrong, and as unlucky event after unlucky event piled up, I began to think nothing could cheer me up. I kept on enduring, however. I thought that the last straw was when my train got stuck for over an hour. Nope, I made it through that with at least a tiny shred of sanity with a little help from Ed Sheeran. His song "Who You Are" is hardly a famous one, but the truth in the beautifully simple lyrics speaks volumes. I felt like crying and then Ed sang through my headphones, saying "it's okay not to be okay." Amen, brother! Sometimes we feel like we constantly have to act like everything's fine when in reality, it's okay not to.

Next, I thought my breaking point would be when I finally arrived in my hometown and got on the wrong bus at midnight. It ended up dropping me off miles away from my apartment and much farther than my starting point. Yes, I came close to losing every shred of sanity, but I stayed slightly calm. However, it seemed like nothing could lift my spirits. I had fallen into a deep chasm of distress. I had become a shell of a person; an empty sac of skin void of any inner humanity like those in the creepy Scarlett Johansson movie Under The Skin.

Me

I was wrong. I forgot that the Backstreet Boys exist. At my most recent staff meeting, another Assistant Language Teacher mentioned that the song "I Want It That Way" is a great tool for teaching English. This comment blew over me at the moment, but came back to the forefront of my mind later when I was thinking of which song to learn next for my students. It made me reminisce about how much I used to love the good ol' 90's boy band, and reflect on the rift it caused between me and my friends who chose to love N*SYNC instead. I decided to give them a listen for old time's sake and instantly felt the stress from within me dissipate. 

Mmm, soul music

Every word in "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely" tugged at my heartstrings just as it always did in the past, and the beat in "Larger Than Life" got me nodding my head in time and walking with a spring in my step. I probably looked like a moron dancing my way down the street and I'm sure my neighbour could hear me belting out Backstreet Boys lyrics through the walls, but I simply don't care. Just like it's okay not to be okay, it's okay to be so much better than okay, too, and tonight, I finally was. I guess the Greek gods decided to pick on someone else for a change. 

Out of Context

The first time I went out with one of the teachers from the school where I work, I asked her why she likes to go to Tokyo, which is relatively far, anytime she is free. She told me that she likes to leave the city in which she teaches because she likes to go far, far away from the students when she has leisure time. 

I didn't really understand this comment at the time. I assumed it couldn't possibly be that difficult to separate one’s work and social lives. I realised just how wrong this notion was. The city in which I teach didn't seem so small at first, until I began running into students no matter where I went, often at the least opportune moments. I’ve often almost run into something on my bike because a student saw me and called my name, catching me completely off guard. They’ve seen me at the grocery store, at the train station on the weekends on my way to a night out in Tokyo, at the convenience store paying bills... it just never ends.

Many of my students now know where I live, and I’m not sure how I feel about that either. My commute walking or biking to school may be short, but it gives me the time I need to mentally prepare myself for dealing with 600 energetic Japanese preteens and teenagers. Trust me, that time is needed for me to maintain what is left of my sanity. However, the other day, as I walked out the door I found myself face to face with one of my special education students. He watched me intently like a predator watching its prey in a nature special.  As I locked my door, all I could think was “great, there goes my mental preparation. It’s show time,” while I mustered up what little energy I could to pretend to be cheerful. Then we walked the entire way to school together. I wouldn't be surprised if students showing up outside my door in the mornings becomes a routine thing.

Now, I certainly understand the sentiments that my teacher friend expressed to me all that time ago. I, too, just want to escape on the weekends and go far, far away. Not that I don’t love my students dearly when they are inside the school. Seeing them outside of context is just too strange.