Beer and Cigarettes for Everybody.

Its getting a little bit cooler here, which is really nice as I am getting a little sick of peeling off my t-shirt everytime I get home. The kids sure aren’t getting any more intelligent though. I know learning another language is tough, and 5 year old kids should probably be given some slack, but come on. At the beginning of every single class, we do this thing called "greeting questions". No matter how old the kids are, they hear these questions once a week when they come to class. Some of these kids have been doing this for a couple years now so you'd figure they might get some of them down. Not a chance. "How old are you?", "What sport do you like?", "What's the weather like?". "What do you like to eat?", and so on. There's only like 6 questions. Without fail, everytime I ask them a question (and I use gestures, draw pictures, everything), they just look at me like I've asked them to recite a passage from the Koran. I’m trying to instill in them how dumb they actually are so over time they will develop some kind of personality disorder. They aren’t very tough either for the most part. Crying seems to be an everyday thing for a lot of them. Some examples of crying kids I’ve had:

Yuka - Was doing fine colouring in her book and, out of nowhere, started bawling. Reason= I stepped on her eraser.

Kodai - Went into a fit of crying which included tears, snot, etc in the middle of attendance. Reason= He couldnt get his clip-on nametag on. I put it on for him and he was immediately fine.

Asuka - Threw her pencil down and stormed off to the other side of the room where she bawled for about 10 minutes, refusing to look at anyone. Reason= Some other kid used her pencil sharpener by mistake.

Mei - Had an absolute fit for 20 minutes. Included flailing, spitting, snot, choking, screaming and kicking, and a little vomit. Got so bad I called my supervisor to see if I should call an ambulance. Reason= I had put her attendance book in another kid's bag.

So not exactly brave little kamikaze pilots here in Habikino city. The little kids can be funny sometimes though. One class, about half the kids decided that they needed to go to the bathroom. So, instead of taking turns like regular people, they all tried to go at once, in a big pee party. Four boys peeing in the same toilet at the same time. Piss everywhere. I had to hold a girl back because she wanted to go too. She didn’t comprehend how bad it would have been for her if she tried to go at the same time as the boys. Afterwards, Id say around 20% of the kids came back to the lesson with underwear on, so making sure everyone was fully dressed took up the remainder of class.

The social scene here hasn't picked up too much but its ok. I’m still in a fierce battle with the young people in my apartment building. I want to be friends, they just want me to go back to Canada it would seem. I was stretching in the hallway after a run one day (which, I admit, probably isn’t the prettiest sight), when one of the doors opened and a small Japanese girl, about my age, started to walk out, keys in hand. She saw me, her eyes went wide, and she quickly went back inside and closed the door. Now, she was obviously on her way to work or school, so I waited in the hallway near my door to see how long she would wait before coming out. I waited there an hour and she never came out. She figured that whatever she had to do that day, be it work, school, whatever, was not worth risking going near the big white guy.
I had some guy in the bookstore come up to me though. He wanted me to proofread his essay, but Ill take what I can get. His essay was on the physical punishment of children and he was all for it apparently. He thought that, "the master teacher when speaking the sermon must enforce the respect either in low or tide." Now, I don’t know what that means but he had some other good points. He wrote, and I almost burst out laughing when I read this, that "love punches" were sometimes needed to correct children and that the children benefited from such "love punches". He concluded with, "Love punches will make the childrens take one's fist seriously."
I mostly hang out with the other teachers from my company and they're alright. There's Sami and Alex, a couple from Australia who are pretty cool Then there's Jessica, an ultra-religious Korean-Australian and finally, there's Paul. Paul is a douchebag who has been in Japan for 5 years and thinks he knows just about all there is about Japanese people and culture. He is also one of those people who, once they begin a story, will finish the story no matter what you have to say. An example:

Paul: So, where are you from?
Bouche: Canada.
P: Ah, I was just there last summer.
B: Oh cool. Whereabouts?
P: I went to Vancouver mostly, really nice place.
B: Oh, that’s where-
P: Yeah so I went to this place, um, North Vancouver, it was called.
B: Yeah I grew up-
P: Really nice area. There's this little park area, don’t know if you know it, its called Lynn Canyon.
B: Yeah, its right by-
P: (Getting a little irritated) ANYWAYS, kind of off the beaten track, you probably don’t know about it, but you can go cliff jumping, and swimming, and there’s people just smoking weed right there on the rocks sometimes.
B: Did you go on the suspen-
P: OH! And there's this cool bridge, kinda scary though. I don’t know why you didn’t hang out there with your friends, such a cool place. I have a nose for these types of places though, I just seem to find the secret areas.
B: I hate you.

I saw my first fight here in Japan the other day. The Japanese are pretty reserved so actual fighting is pretty rare. Couple drunk guys were going at it in the subway station (there's quite a few drunks on the trains, the Japanese have an embarrassing tolerance for alcohol). Let's just say it wasn’t the impressive, acrobatic ninja fight I was expecting, more of an awkward bout of spitting and hair pulling. The number of drunks on the trains is partly due to the fact that beer and cigarettes are sold in vending machines here. The only thing preventing 12 year olds from drinking and smoking to their hearts content is a small sign on the machine reminding them that you have to be 20 to use it. I have tried unsuccessfully to impress upon Japanese people how quickly Canadian society would collapse into chaos with roaming gangs of drunk, cancer-ridden pre-teens if this was tried in Canada. They don’t get it though.

So yeah that’s pretty much it. I’m going to Hiroshima this weekend to meet up with my training friends so that should be fun. If anyone has Skype let me know cause I just downloaded it. Ok, see ya.


Bouche


P.S. Oh, update on the pedophile front. Apparently, in an effort to get their children molested, the Japanese don’t allow any children past Grade 1 to walk to school with a parent. They are not allowed. They have to walk by themselves. So there are little groups of plump, slow-moving school children walking to school everyday, the locations of which are well advertised. I can only assume Japanese people hate their children.