Spring.

Winter has finally come to an end. My days of huddling over the kerosene heater have come to a close. I have learned valuable lessons about the thermal qualities of paper walls, and the value of fiberglass insulation. I have begun a sociology thesis detailing an argument that rather succinctly demonstrates how central heating is, in fact, the most influential invention of the last ten centuries. The thermal underwear is packed away and daylight has once more begun to push dusk every closer to midnight. Yes. Spring is here. The cherry blossoms are blooming in their annual ritual, celebrating the heart-wrenching and ephemeral nature of the truly beautiful. And it's been pissing rain for the last forty-eight hours. Spring.

Welcome back to Shiiba, my friends.

I don't really understand this one.

So this event began in a normal fashion. There is nothing particularly strange about teachers and students gathering for dinner in the student's dormitory. Which is what we did. After a delicious meal, we were all ushered out of the cafeteria area while the students struck the tables and chairs and laid down blankets, a perfectly standard accomodation for floor sitting. So, while us adults are outside waiting, the students come around and hand out little candles in little tin foil holders. It's Christmas, so I feel that this isn't particularly unusual either. And we file back into the cafeteria, lighting our little candles from the big ones at the door. Then familiar music fills the room, and everybody starts singing. It's a familiar song, but they have their own special Japanese words. I stick with the English, "Silent night, holy night", etc. Perfectly normal holiday events.

Then things get weird.

It seems I've wandered into some sort of talent show. The first act seems to be some sort of comedy event. As the curtain opens, the Rocky theme begins to play. Not "Eye of the Tiger", the other one. There's a poster of a group of men sitting center stage, and it looks like a TV poster. From behind the poster pokes a little head in a bald cap, doing some sort of weird swaying motion, as if the person were trying to ascertain the situation on the other side of the poster without actually peeking over. But peek over it does, eventually, and it's a girl from my class, wearing a bald cap, long-johns, an orange hunting jacket, and magic marker. The magic marker is all over her face in a clever imitation of a beard, mustache, and large bushy eyebrows. The audience starts laughing. I start to grow concerned. She hops out from behind the poster, looks at it, does a classic double-take and flips it over. On the reverse is a picture that is identical, except the characters in this poster are four girls from my classes. I'd use their names here, for added versimilitude, but, to be honest, I don't know any of my student's names. At this point, the audience is going wild, again for reasons I don't fully grasp.

And behold, enter the other girls in the poster, also dressed in a variety of hunting gear and magic marker. They start saying things at this point, but I can't help you with that. I can understand Japanese now, but only when it's repeated five times really slowly. Oh yeah, and with really simple words and helpful hand gestures. They do a strange unison jump step, getting their knees up in the air in a floppy sort of way, before landing with their right foot out in a jaunty Charlie Chaplin fashion. They must be telling jokes too, because the audience is going crazy every time they open their mouths. This continues for a period, when, all of a sudden, a wild boar runs across the stage. I can tell it's a wild boar because it's played by the chubby girl. She's wearing a mask, like the type used in movies, with the stocking pulled over the face, thus obscuring it, and a pink blanket wrapped over her. She's running across the strange with a strange uneven gallop, bent over and tapping the ground with her hands. From these observations, I felt boar was the only possible conclusion. Exit the hunters in pursuit.

Next scene opens on four more girls, this time attired more traditionally. I conclude that these are the hunter's wives, because they're dressed in the grandma suit, which is a blue robe number, with a possibility of hair bonnet. This is most commonly seen on 800 year old women walking around the village staring straight at the ground because their spines have long ago frozen at a 90 degree angle. Here it is accompanied by hideously over applied red lipstick, I assume to make it clear to the audience that these girls are, in fact, girls. These clown faced grannies are making similar jokes, because the audience is still laughing. They're also doing something vulgar with props of oversized rice cakes. I can't explain it well, except to say that it involved grasping the rice cake firmly and then some pelvic thrusting. Very unladylike. At this point, we introduce our last two characters. The first is another woman, who, because of the lipstick, I decide is also supposed to be playing a woman. She's wearing overalls though, so maybe she's a farmer. The next character is either a police officer, a fire fighter, or just some guy. She enters, they talk, people laugh. I don't really understand, I'm trying to read her hat to see if she's supposed to be play a cop or a fire fighter. Then the hunters enter, and they all sit down to eat, and make jokes about shochu, a local alcholic product, while the wives watch. At this point the laughs slow down, which just reflects the difficulties of middle school comedy writing. There was also a cow skull from which the cop/firefighter ate a pretend eyeball. I think this scene might have included some exposition that completely eluded me.

The next scene is the hunters and the cop/firefighter on their own again, talking on walkie-talkies. Then, the boar returns and they chase it around for a while. Eventually three of the hunters catch it and drag it off like some mental patient, kicking her feet as she's being led to the soft-walled room. Then something must happen off-stage because the boar and the cop/firefighter re-enter alone and wrestle. After a fierce battle, it seems that the cop wins, and the curtains close.

They open again on the wife/farmer standing center stage with a walkie-talkie. Some really sad music starts playing, like the music from the end of The Hulk that they play in Family Guy. (First Family Guy reference in this blog. There you go.) She's crying and saying stuff into the walkie-talkie. I can only assume she's trying to contact the cop/firefighter. As I might have made clear, I didn't understand any of this. But there's a happy ending, because now everyone enters, and takes the boar of stage and the wife/farmer and cop/firefighter are talking, with a lot of awkward feet-watching and head turning, and a general stuttering of speech, while music from the end of some hypothetical Julia Roberts movie plays in the background. I think this is supposed to be some sort of love confession. Anyway, it ends with a hug, and then the whole cast does it's curtain call, complete with the afore-mentioned unison jump step.

I can't explain it any better than that. But that's not all. There was a second act.

I fight authority.

Today I was supposed to go to Nobeoka for a counseling session. It's a little twenty minute sitdown where a veteran JET asks you about your job situation, your day to day, and any problems you might have therein. Problem is, Nobeoka is a good two hour drive for yours truly, and it seemed a little silly to drive two hours to talk for twenty minutes, then drive two hours back. So I decided not to go.

So, my school gets a call from these counseling folks, asking if they know where I am. Of course, I'm sitting right here. So, these counseling folks inform the principal that I'm supposed to be in Nobeoka for a mandatory counseling session. I very politely tell him, "No thank you. I'm not going." This is difficult for him to understand. Not that he doesn't understand the words. It's very simple English, and he can handle it. But since what I've said is so insane, he tracks down my English teacher to make sure he heard it right.

And he has. I'm not going. So, my teacher asks me why. Fair question. I explain that it is so very far away, and that I'm not really interested in discussing my life with a stranger who can't possibly do anything about anything anyway. If this was some sort of licensed psychiatrist, maybe I'd have done it. I've always been curious about what really goes on in a shrink's office, but this is just another JET, some guy a year older than me who probably knows a lot less. I explained this. My teacher called the people back and told them not to expect me. I guess at this point, they must have explained to her that it was a "mandatory session for first-year JETs". Well, you know how I feel about mandatory, so I said to her, "Mandatory is a funny word. I mean, what are they going to do to me?"

So she answered, "Well, they want to talk to you about life in Shiiba and --"

I cut her off. "I meant, what are they going to do if I don't go?"

This is what confused the principal so much, and it blind-sided my teacher too. She looked at me, and explained again how it was required that I attend. I asked the obvious question, "Required by who?" and she said it was the prefectural board of education or something like that. Which was great. I said, "I don't work for them. No problem." This really confused her. The prefectural board of education is a body of superior authority. My casual dismissal of their wishes obviously blew a fuse somewhere in her brain because she moved back a step to explain to me how it was required. Well, I was out of new reasons to explain why I wasn't going, and I had no intention of changing my mind, so I told her, "Don't worry about it," and turned back to my computer. It was rude, but it ended the conversation.

So, then there's a conference. I'm not party to this exchange, but about half the school's faculty is. I guess they have to decide what to do by committee. I can hear my name bounced about a few times, so I know what they're talking about. They keep looking at me like I've grown a second head, but I've really just grown used to people looking at me weird. Apparently this kind of disobedience is very confusing, since at the end of the conference, both the principal and the vice-principal and my teacher come over to explain one more time, "The counseling in Nobeoka is required of all first-year ALTs."

But I'm not interested, "I really don't care. It's a waste of my time."

"Yes, but--"

More forcefully, "I'm not going."

I don't know what they did then, but I think my ability to say no, not only to some distant, nebulous authority, but to my direct superiors, intimidated them. About twenty minutes worth of phone calls later, my teach comes back to tell me that because of the long distance, the prefecture has given me permission not to attend.

She couldn't understand why I was laughing.

C/Fe

Japanese students are the worst students I have ever seen. They are like androids, or, as the case may be, gynoids. (You've just been made nerdier. Deal with it.) Besides the fact that they really do look factory made, with identical uniforms, uniformly black hair, and invariable skin and eye color, they show no evidence of independent initiative.

Here are some things Japanese students can't do. I've worked at this job for over a month now, and none of my students has yet asked a question in class. Not one. No one has asked me to explain anything, clarify what I said, or even just repeat what I said. I mean it, no questions. This includes asking to use the bathroom. As far as I can tell, Japanese students do not pee, further reinforcing my conclusion that they are, in fact, robots. You can even confuse them like robots. Try these simple steps the next time you get a chance. First, ask them a question they don't know the answer to. Actually, that's the only step. Now stand back and watch as the little machine searches its memory files for the answer. When it can't find the answer, it doesn't give you a wrong answer. It can't do that. It doesn't say, "I don't know." I don't think it can do that either. It'll just keep on searching for the answer, silently staring straight down at its desk. It'll sit like that for minutes, hours, weeks, months. Or until you reboot it.

But really, I can't fault Japanese workmanship. These kids never miss a day of school, and everyday they serve their own school lunches and clean the whole school. Bathrooms, classrooms, mopping, sweeping, the works. I'm really thinking of getting one for around the house. I think Toyota makes an affordable economy model.

Here's something you can't do.

So I was at a staff drinking party on Wednesday. Staff drinking parties are something Japanese people do. It's where everyone can get together with all the people they see every single day, except it's more fun because we're drunk and we can wear blue jeans. Anyway, in between being interrogated in crappy English and answering in even crappier Japanese, I got a chance to sample one of the delicious local delicacies.

The first thing you notice about whale meat is the color. It's black as coal. But only on the outside. The inside is red as spilled blood. The combined effect is like eating a chewy piece of volcano, all igneous rock on the outside, with hot magma lurking beneath the surface. I'm actually very confused about how that works, because these are small, bit sized pieces of whale, and a whale is a large animal. This seems to suggest that at some point the outside of each of these small pieces was, in fact, the inside of a larger piece which means everything ought to be the same color. Maybe it oxidizes and changes color or something. I don't have a lot of experience with whale outside of Moby Dick, and that's mostly talking about spermecetti.

The second thing you'll notice about the flesh of the great cetaceans is the texture. It's chewy. Not like the fatty part on the edge of a steak chewy. Like bubblegum chewy. This may be because it is raw. Did I forget to mention that? The total experience for the end-user is a lot like eating meat taffy. It doesn't taste like chicken, and it doesn't taste like fish. You dip it in some mystery sauce (all Japanese sauces are a mystery to me) and then you spend about twenty minutes eating it. Really, it's a mandibular workout.

But back to my original point, good luck buying a pound of leviathan meat at a Safeway.

Ow...

Everyday I spend in Japan makes me a little stupider than the one before. Not through any influence of a group-oriented culture on my passionately individualistic psyche, nor through the necessary reductions in the size and range of my vocabulary. It's the daily cranial trauma I receive every time I walk through my front door, literally knocking by neurons out of position and into stupefying cellular death.

Let me tell you about a little something called Sports Day

Sports Day. Sounds innocuous enough. The idea is simple. You assemble an entire school of children, take them out to the track, and get them to run around all day, competing in a wide variety of unusual events. Now, for the most part, this consists of relatively tame and universal competitions, like foot races. Nothing to be said about that. But there were some other, more unusual highlights to the day's festivities.
In between the school hula dance, which everyone, I mean everyone, participated in, and the team cheers, which looked like a dance from a Charlie Brown Christmas hopped up on amphetamines, you know the one, where Linus just turns back and forth and bobs his head (imagine that, but times sixty, with shouting), there was one event in particular that stood out.
It begins innocently enough. The different athletic clubs from the school assemble, and they march around that track. The tennis team has its rackets, the baseball team has its ball and bats, the kendo team its wooden swords. Nothing strange about that, just showing a little spirit. So, when they've all made their way around, each club splits up, and lines up around the track, spread out at intervals. One person from each team lines up at the starting line. At this point I'm a little confused. What happens next makes it much worse.
Someone fires the starting gun, and the clubs begin a relay race. But this is no ordinary footrace. The kendo kids are running around the course in their heavy armor, swinging their swords over their heads, yelling, "Hai!" with every stroke. The tennis team is trying to make it around the track as fast as they can while bouncing tennis balls on their rackets. The ping pong team has no chance, trying to bounce the ping pong balls while running just sends them flying everywhere and those suckers are constantly running them down. The volleyball team doesn't seem to have much trouble, just setting the ball to themselves. The baseball players have it easiest, they just have to run while carrying first base.
But wait, my story gets better. The second lap is the pairs lap. Now the kendo kids are literally beating at each other, in pairs around the racetrack. And they aren't taking it easy. More than once I saw a kid get floored by his supposed teammate. I guess that's why they kept the armor on. The tennis team has it easier, they just have to volley back and forth all the way around. It's basically impossible, but at least it doesn't cause bruising. The ping pong team is disqualified. Trying to rally back and forth around the track, without benefit of a table, just means they lost all their balls. The volleyball team and the baseball team are the only ones in competition, but the baseball team wins. It's easier to throw the baseball back and forth and keep moving than it is to set and bump it back and forth, I guess.
That might have been the strangest thing I saw that day, or in all my days. I'd never have believed it, but it's true, every word.