A few days ago I had a couple of hours to spare at work and was at a bit of a loose end, so I ended up writing a semi-fictitious and rather romantacized piece of prose in adoration of my good friend Becca. To write about her in this way wasn’t so much a conscious decision, she just entered my thoughts in this light and it felt necessary to put it into words. Let’s just say it needs some fine tuning, and I have been reading Marianne Keyes recently, so it’ll not be published in this here post.

I’ve had this sort of inclination with a number of my female friends recently. The obvious reason would be the rose-tinted lens that goes with the distance between us, of course, but it’s also happened with my friends in closer proximity.  Louise is destined for romance with a takoyaki boy soon (despite her panics over text messages secretly sent through our friend and translator, Wakako), and I’m dying to make a rom-com out of it. I have Japanese friends, too, whose existences are forming very fluffy little narratives in my head which may signify, surprised as I am to admit it, that I’m succumbing to the Japanese ‘cute’ obsession.  I think it all began when I started watching Sakura, a sugary anime series who’s namesake has a beautiful and eccentric best friend who is constantly filming Sakura through all her supernatural pre-pubescent adventures in complete awe of her loveliness.

 Thus occupying this slightly saccharin but completely genuine (and not unpleasant) headspace, then, my revulsion at a conversation I had last night is not so very surprising; although once it’s been recounted I would be interested to see if any of you reading this who are familiar with Japan would agree with the man in question.

I went to an Irish bar run by an American which served Mexican food, not far from my house, with a teacher from one of my schools. Having been decidedly unsure (is that an oxymoron?) about the owner on the previous occasions I had met him, this bar which shall remain nameless would not have been my first choice for food in Hikari, but my colleague and companion had never been before and fancied giving it a go (plus it was local meaning we could both get a few beers down us).

My sempai asked me during our meal, ‘what kind of behaviour have you found strange or funny since you came to Japan?’ Shortly after I answered this question, the owner came and sat with us for what turned out to be a more-than-is-customary-in-any-country amount of time for a chat. Making talk with him, I asked him the same question that my sempai had asked me, expecting him to say something about sniffing or slurping or somesuch. Instead, he launched into a spiel about how Japanese people don’t make friends, owing to the strict hierarchy of social relations which dictates that in any relationship one individual will occupy and inferior position while the other is superior. At first his words had a toungue-in-cheek tone, but as he went on at length I realised, to my horror, that he wasn’t joking. Japanese people, he said, could be friends with foreigners, but with a few exceptions are incapable of forming genuine friendships between themselves.

 This offended me deeply, and I was embarrassed to be sat next to another foreigner who spoke this way. Of course my sempai laughed it off, being Japanese, and I did the same, being British. The difference was that when we left the bar I exploded while she omitted to comment and merely told me she’d had a fun evening.

I don’t doubt that the vast majority of relationships in Japan do function on a junior/senior basis, but to claim that this precludes genuine friendship I find a little gross. It’s true enough that I’ve had little chance to talk openly with anyone Japanese about this. My teacher half-agreed with the owner of the bar, but said that true friendships do form between classmates.

One thing that came into stark focus when I arrived in Japan was how we in the West exist in a culture of reciprocity which differs from that of Japan. At first it unsettled me, and even now I make mistakes at the most basic level. For example, I try and learn as much Japanese from what I hear around me, but if I echo the words of my seniors in the staffroom, I am not showing due respect. Seniors, when speaking to juniors, use an entirely different lexicon, and vice versa.

The use of such language may indeed reaffirm power relationships which mean that two individuals are never truly ‘equal’. Yet this should not prevent such individuals finding affiliation with one another and eventually coming to care for each other as friends. The differing codes of behaviour do not automatically dictate that seniors will abuse their power and behave unfairly towards juniors. While I’m sure this does happen, I have not born witness to it yet, and I certainly have born witness to such abuses in the UK. And I have been privileged enough to spend time with Japanese people whose friendships with each other are visible and real.

It’s sad that a post which began fluffy and nice turned into a rant, and yet last night’s encounter has in a strange way made me love Japan all the more, not least owing to the dignity with which my teacher received such tactless and ill-informed statements.

No-one should have the genuity of their friendships called into question, whatever culture they’re in. And while my headspace may be full of cotton wool and soft-focus, I’d much rather have it that way than to be as depressed as this bar-owner must be at the sight of a world devoid of friendship.

Whether our schoolmates, our colleagues, our bus-buddies, our drinking pals or our bosses, wherever they’re from - long live chums!

My supervisor these days can’t be seen without clutching his gospel of multilingual communication, all in Japanese bar the title: ‘Toss’. It doesn’t come much more accurate if Japanese English textbooks are anything to go by.

So all has been quiet of late; sorry to those of you looking to kill time at work!

 Jess, my sempai and comrade in Hikari, recently remarked that while we in the US/UK occasionally put up with the cold when absolutely necessary, the Japanese live in it. And she’s right. My Japanese teacher wanted to have a party, but has postponed until March because it’s too chilly.

Life being thus, one is principally concerned by keeping warm, and thoughts of adventures tend to be trumped by the prospect of a nice warm bed. Yet such quiet times have allowed me to concetrate on work alot more, and have born some happy fruits in the process. While my return to Japan was followed by one of my bleaker fortnights, it seems a trust has taken root between me and my teachers, resulting in greater companionship between me and my students.

I ran some classes today which reminded me of what a topsy-turvy world Japan is to us gaikokujin. I brought some newspapers and magazines back from the UK and challenged my Year 8s to a bit of detective work.

Obstacle 1: Where’s the front cover? Our front is their back, and vice versa, resulting in some very puzzled faces when all my first question asked for was the price.

Obstacle 2: Where’s Israel? Moreover, what is Israel? They still don’t really know.

Obstacle 3: It’s not just the English textbooks, then, that insist on everything being written left to right, but everything the Anglophonics read - all literature in Japan is printed vertically.

Obstacle 4: Why aren’t these comics manga?

Obstacle 5: Not recognising Nicholas Sarkozy is fair game. Neither did their teacher. This is also fair game, as I couldn’t put a name to any leaders of South Korea, or Japan had I not live here for while. Yet for a moment I was ashamedly startled.

Obtacle 6: My personal favourite. What on earth is a badger? Even upon translation (’holebear’ in Japanese) both students and teacher remained perplexed, and my teacher concluded one could only be seen in a zoo.

These observations are not criticisms of my students or my teacher, but rather highlight for a second some of the things I take so very much for granted and make me realise that we are phenomenally different, and that’s great. For some time I have been frustrated by the knowledge that no matter how hard I try, I’ll never truly fit in. Yet today I loved being different; for the first time it wasn’t the rudimentary ‘look at the foreigner’ routine, but rather giving the kids a small insight into what we watch, read and pore over (the mags ranged from local rag to Newsweek to Marie Claire to Spiderman to Bratz, which for the record is the spawn of Satan).

It would be nice to think I could do the same with Japanese newspapers and mags, but it’ll be a long time before my kanji makes the grade. Maybe I could start with some kiddy comics and really give my students something to talk about.

I had never intended to write anything up regarding my trip back to England this Christmas, but as my good friend Louise has told me she is awaiting reading material I guess I should deliver something. It was an assault upon the brain and body, but also a journey well worth making - the most that Fran and I were apart for the entire 2 weeks was a couple of hours at my parents’ where he worked and I chatted. For now, here’s some idle scribble used to pass 1 of the 8 hours I had to spend in Bangkok on my way to London. More may follow, it may not. It depends if the cocktail of jetlag and festive residue kill me first.

 ’So the transition has commenced. I never anticipated it feeling quite so transitory, as having been away only 5 months and with gaijin most weekends, planting myself back into western culture didn’t seem that big a deal. Which it isn’t…yet.

As I sit here trying to pass the first of 8 hours at Bangkok International Airport, supping on an ice-cold Heineken and nibbling on a nice warm sausage roll, the grace and reserve of Japan is already beginning to come in to focus.

Airports are strange places at the best of times. Overheated and synthetic, the concoction of coffee, perfume and plastic is at first a rather exciting aroma, until it gets replaced by the smell of frustration and farts. Right now, however, Bangkok is as airy as airports get, and is providing me with the perfect opportunity to get all the staring at people who are Not Japanese out of the way before ending up looking like a real weirdo in London.

I always understood logically why the Japanese stare so much. As gaijins in Yamaguchi, we look very different and there are very few of us. I’d stare at a leopard if I saw one in Belper. Or Manchester for that matter. But lordy, we are an odd-looking bunch, and I must confess some of us do veer on the side of monstrous in appearance (I think particularly here of the more-than-portly Australians I have just sympathised with on the beer-hunt - for some reason there is a limited supply of liquor in Thailand on election day). A particularly non-monstrous family has just wandered by, however, and the baby’s sky-blue eyes remind me of why so many Japanese people think we’re ‘cute’.

Looking at all these care-free and sunkissed youths reminds me of Sri Lanka, while I sit here looking pasty in my varyingly earnest shades of charcoal, having ditched the rollneck (also charcoal) and the legwarmers when I realised how close the the equator we actually are. Now there’s some bonkers tenses.  So many of these people look so young, and while most of them are probably around the 19 mark and thus only a few years my junior, I feel like they have so much to live through before they get to the sage-like figure of 23.  I have no doubt, either, that Japan has aged me. Not in these sense that it has made me any wiser, but that it has exposed me to things which call into question the excited ideals of young adulthood. 

Japan’s also exposed me, in no uncertain terms, to Better Ways of Living. I use the plural because the Japanese have not mastered a singularly ‘better’ way of living, however you measure quality of life. But the breed of collectivist psychology that exists there, at least in my brief experience of it, has shown me just how much people can achieve when it is necessary for them to plough all their energies into any task they undertake for the sake of the group. It doesn’t denigrate the accomplishments of the individual. If anything, it heightens them, and I think I’ve seen that from the students’ performance at sports’ festival to even doing karaoke with the staff. Individual fear of embarrassment = not singing. But doing it to keep the party alive for everyone else means practice, which puts the Japanese much more firmly on the road to perfect. 

Isn’t it interesting that having inwardly bemoaned the Japanese superiority complex for some time now, I feel I am somehow superior to all the outwardly generic backpackers here by being the Girl Who Lives in Japan. Now there’s a mind-bend I wasn’t expecting! I could do with Kieran to talk to right now.

Thai sounds like Jamaican Chinese. Another adorable blue-eyed child. Why do the caucasians age so?

20 hours and I’m back with Fran. That shouldn’t seem so long, should it? I’ve more to say on that, but it’s time for me to pop for a wee and to sniff out another place that’ll serve me beer.’

I have a muscular ache in my sides to day which should be alot more bothersome, were it not for the fact that such injury was incurred through 7 hours straight of raving in Fukuoka on Saturday night, to some of the best dance music I’ve heard in a very long time.

Louise and I planned some time ago to go and give our support to Junko, who was running her final night under the alias of ‘Pure’ at Kiethflack, as after four years she has decided it’s time for something new. Louise and I are turning into a silly obachan couple going to Fukuoka, going for the same ramen and to the same club as last time and quite happy to continue doing just that thankyou very much.

 Obachan we were not, however, when we hit the upstairs floor of the club at midnight to some house - yes! actual house music - being spun by an Irish character who doesn’t seem too fond of Louise and I after we drew attention to his Irishness when compiling a e-flyer for Pure a while ago (silly bugger). For al it was of the cheesier ilk, just to hear some proper four-to-the-floor sent my heart racing and and one point my knees a-knocking with sheer over-excitement, so I drank alot of gin to calm me down.

Following that were two tremendous sets from a pair of Japanese DJs, the first whose name I sadly can’t remember and the second named Hiro. The first set took Lou and I on a fantastic journey which testified to the fact that techno is in fact beautiful when it’s done well. The other remarkable thing about this DJ- and I’ve only ever heard this done once before by the Idjut Boys at Electric Chair - is that at one point he managed to seamlessly mix together disco and techno, a difficult sound to imagine but one which makes you dance like you’re life depends on it.

Hiro played a slightly more downtempo, minimal set, although similarly managed to skilfully drop in the odd bit of feel-good house for good measure. Speaking of good measure, this boy exemplified just how different Japanese DJs are to British ones. He was good-looking, for a start, and got through the night on water and a square of chocolate. There were no random birds or silly hangers on sorting his records for him or drooling over his decks; he could manage just fine by himself. And when his set finish at 6am to cries of ‘one more choon!’ he paused momentarily, gave a little sigh, took off his coat and proceeded to play not one more choon but a whole extra set, taking Louise and I and whoever else sauntered onto the dancefloor through til 7am.

Louise had not gotten drunk that night, and by the time we left I had sobered up completely, yet the two of us left the club BUZZING. We’d taken one short break for a snack and sat down for a cigarette a couple of times, but other than that we were at it in no-half-arsed manner for 7 hours. As soon as breakfast was down us the exhaustion hit and we passed out on the bus back to Shimonoseki, finally hitting the hay around 10.30am at Louise’s flat.

The foghorns from ships outside had a strangely soothing effect as I lay there on Louise’s tatami and thought about what a wonderful time I had had. There is something really special about finding someone who a) shares your love of music absolutely and completely and b) can go on little clubbing adventures with you and feel the same sense of accomplishment at having soaked up hours of aural joy and pounded it out on the dancefloor as hard as your little legs will allow (or big long legs in Louise’s case).

I hope we have another trip like that again, yet there was something about it which makes me think we’ll never quite repeat it.

Some time ago my friend Mitch made the claim that the English language quite simply has more words than most other languages, and particularly compared to Japanese. I have no idea what the statistics are, and am not about to start number-crunching now, but rather would like to share with you my still sapling thoughts on the differing social function of language in Japan as compared with England, if not the West in general. Being one who holds that language constructs a significant proportion of our social world, I think trying to understand not just the meanings attached to words, but the way in which the Japanese language constructs Japanese life, can help us to overcome some of the anxiety that goes with being baffled persistently and daily.

When I first began studying Japanese I learned that most of the time, the subject is usually omitted from the sentence (particularly ‘you’ or ‘I’), and thus a great deal is understood through context. I have recently come to discover, however, that context is important in a much wider sense when it comes to conversational Japanese. For all Japanese may have fewer phonetic constructs than English, there are a whole range of kanji for one particular set of sounds. Not being a kanji reader, as yet, it can thus be quite amusing when one finds that the word for lovesick is the same as that for a breed of whale.

As a native speaker of English, I’m sure I am blissfully unaware of how repetetive our use of language can become, yet the role of repetition  in Japanese seems to hold true to our conception of the Japanese concern with form over function. This is particularly true when it comes to greetings, and it does rather cheer me. So if ever a student sees me in the corridor - even if I’ve already seen them several times that day - there is always a perfunctory ‘konnichiwa’ (or more frequently ‘hello’ as should be the case). Beyond that, there are stock phrases for every activity  - a squawking of ‘onegai shimasu!’ at the start of every lesson and ‘arigato gozaimashita’ at the end; ‘itadakimasu’ to start eating and ‘gochiso sama deshita’ to finish; ’shitsurei shimasu’ upon entering a room and ’shitsurei shimashita’ upon leaving, and the list goes on.

While these may sound like banal observations, I just find it interesting that for all Japanese people are, in the main, much quieter than us gaikokujin, language itself serves a much more specific social function in tightly definining various social relations through the use and repetition of specific words and phrases. Many people are already aware that there are various registers of verb form which are used to address certain people according to the social ranking, but I think we take our understanding of language as contstructive of culture much further than this.

The repetition of the same words (the most common right now being ’samui!’ as it gets steadily colder), whether a conscious decision on the part of the speaker or otherwise, represents the agent not using a tool by which he or she can be clearly marked out as different from others, something that many of us in the West like to do, if not to be radically different then at least to be understood as individuals. We have utterances for the beginning and end of things, for entering and leaving a room, for saying hello in the morning etc., but by and large we tend to employ a much wider range of vocabulary in order to perform these social functions. The arbitrariness of language means that greater ambiguities can arise in the gap between speaker and listener when the vocabulary used is less predictable, and thus social relations between individuals take on new meaning and are more open to question. Here in Japan, this issue is less likely to arise as individuals adhere to a common lexicon on their day to day business, and thus social hierarchies are maintained.

 I am not for a minute suggesting that Japanese people do not make use of their own lexicon in interpersonal exchanges, but rather that the performance of specific utterances has more inherent meaning here than the meaning of the words themselves. As I said, these are just sapling thoughts at present; we’ll see which way they grow when my new year’s promise to get cracking on the Nihon-go comes to fruition…

I did my first lesson on Christmas today, and what a bizarre experience it was. It could have felt rather depressing were it not the fact the three weeks hence I will be back with my favourite people in the world preparing for a yuletide onslaught of outrageously festive proportions.

Trying to explain the excitement children in England feel at the prospect of some fat bloke squeezing down the chimney (be it the one in their homes or in their minds given that I certainly never had a chimney in my house, and could only conclude he found an open window) to these rather puzzled faces left me at something of a loss. But then out came the  crackers - exploding stuff! - and they were all over Christmas, pawing at prizes and paper hats, trying their best in English to ask me where I got my lovely plush red Santa, and if they could get one in Hikari. I did a quick round of Pass the Parcel with them, as although it’s not usually a Christmas activity it was an ace way to get them singing along to my oh-so-schmultzy Christmas CD and do a bit of present-giving. The comedy thing about it was that where in the UK kids would normally be savagely tearing the paper off in order to make as big a mess as possible, I kept hearing the famous Japanese phrase ‘mottainai’ - meaning ‘don’t waste it!’ -  uttered in worried tones by whoever the music stopped on as they very carefully tried to unpick my botched efforts at minimal taping in order to avoid ripping the wrapping. Very sensible and very cute, but see below for a rant which explains why I find this Japanese mantra faintly ridiculous:

http://www.lo-la.co.uk/2007/10/14/you-want-some-plastic-with-that/

 This dude isn’t exaggerating.

But back to Christmas, or seeming lack thereof in Japan, which comes in no way as a surprise except for the fact that they’ve ticked all the boxes - crap versions of Christmas carols in every shop, admittedly fewer adverts but still some spectacular illuminations, allusions to the importance of kinfolk and a general whole-hearted (when have the Japanese ever been half-hearted?) attempt at ‘doing’ Christmas, but just missing it. You can’t expect anything less really, but you’ve got to hand it to them for trying.

Roll on eight hours in Bangkok!!

Having returned from my biggest excursion to date, I feel like a whole new Japan has been opened up to me; one which shatters certain quaint illusions I had about this country devoted to beauty and manners, and which has stoked an insatiable curiosity about the effects of so little space on so many people, and the relationship between collectivism and individualism in this bonkersly vibrant world whose activities seem never-ending.

I decided to pack in as much of Kansai as I could into three days, and thus bombed my way between Osaka, Kyoto and Nara on one of the busiest weekends of the year (Friday was Labour Day and therefore a public holiday). The sadness with such cramming is that it is difficult to feel able to write authoritatively about one’s experience, although doing so much travelling opened my eyes to the scale of the urban landscape in central Japan.

 Osaka was a brief but fulfilling adventure. From the minute I stepped off the train I felt there was a difference in temperament that stretched beyond what one would normally expect from a big city. Osaka is angry, and likes to laugh at the rest of the world. It roars at Tokyo; and with an accent that requires use of every facial muscle and double one’s normal diaphragm exertion, it parades its dirty neon backstreets of love hotels, achingly trendy bars and thickets of fashionista boutiques denser than the Amazonian undergrowth like the crown jewels. Propositioning is the norm here, on the part of women as well as men - something I am not accustomed to in Yamaguchi.

Kyoto, on the other hand, was a city of subtle class, and of thousands of smiling and thoughtful faces amid the teeming throngs who had come to witness the almost-made-up autumn colours shrouding the dozens of temples that surround this beautiful city. I must confess any accurate rendition of Kyoto must wait until a later date, as my entire day was spent agape at the endless reds, yellows, pinks, greens and oranges that pigmented the perfectly formed maple leaves that hung from every branch of every tree that Kieran and I encountered whilst chewing the fat by the canal and indulging in a spot of culture along the way. Kyoto, having bee the capital of Japan from 794 to 1868, is brimming with temples and shrines and genuine cultural artifacts which were thankfully spared the US carpet-bombings during the Pacific War*. We saw only a fraction of them, which is a perfect excuse for me to return.

Nara shares with Kyoto the special privilege of having been spared American carpet bombings during the war, meaning it too is a religious and cultural hub, although thankfully a much more navigable one. I had very little time in Nara, but a couple of hours on a bike allowed me to get a good eyefull of the deer park, a couple of temples, and the spectacular five-storey pagoda at the entrance to the park - easily the most impressive structure I’ve seen to date. Nara has a European feel similar to that of Hiroshima, which I find immensely appealing; the little insect-people move more like nice glow-worms than the blue-arsed flies of Fukuoka or the preying mantises of Osaka.

 Despite having such a short stay in each city, I found time to get lost in each of them, which I was glad to have done each time. I find myself getting lost alot in Japan, and there’s a part of me wonders if it’s my subconscious mind making me do it on purpose. It’s as though I so often need to be in the right place at the right time that my brain goes out of the way to put me in the wrong place whenever it can, and whether it turns out to be the right or wrong time is a gamble which makes the adventure worth it.

 I will be going back to Kansai in a few months, and it will be interesting to see how much it makes me rumble with excitement from the inside next time.

*Most of the castles in Japan have been restructured, often several times, not only as a result of the Pacific War but of centuries civil conflict and torchings of disgraced kings and emperors. Osaka-Jo, along with the structures in Kyoto and Nara, is one of the few remaining genuine articles.

When I first found out I would be moving to Japan I decided that from within weeks of landing I would become best friends to Ripslyme and Kyoto Jazz Massive and that I would have endless otaku parties consisting of nothing but people being horribly pretentious and listening to really good music. It hasn’t quite happened that way, but music has become intertwined with my life here in very different ways - and much more rewarding ways at that.

I decided to bring my flute here in the hope of finding an extra-curricular niche that wouldn’t involve much exercise. When I discovered that the best most junior high schools have to offer is a ‘brass band’, I was quietly deflated, envisioning renditions of the Liberty Bell and the Hovis theme piped out by Dad’s Army trapped in the bodies of adolescent thirteen-year-old Japanese girls. How wrong I was.

 Today I played a concert with the band at one of my schools, marking the departure of the final-year students. Playing music with these students is a privilege of the highest order, and here’s why…

 I have two friends in England who were recently assigned the catchphrase ‘Shall we just do it and then it’s DONE’ by another wonderful friend of ours. These dear girls (who are sisters, for the record), are stupendous party-organisers and manage to look good pretty much constantly. I envy them tremendously, so coming to Japan and finding that everyone lives by that motto was something of a humbling experience.

My first performance with the brass band was at their school’s culture festival (bunkasai)  about a month ago. I’d practiced with them a few times prior, but was handed a sheet of music on the day totally alien to me. Being not the ablest of sight-readers, I was rather concerned that ‘Invicta’ would prove to be a rather embarrassing number for all of us. An uncanny thing occurred, however. I played every note in its right place and at the right pitch. It was as though I had, for three minutes, been let into the world where the ganbatte mantra rings true.

Today, we played the theme from ‘Swing Girls’, a Japanese movie about some hapless schoolgirls finding themselves having to replace the recently food-poisoned jazz-band, the poisoning of whom had been inadvertently their doing. Incidentally, the cast of this film had never played music before and came out after four months at a Yamaha training school sounding like this:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVhYmNwj9dQ

 I got to play that music today. This sort of performance is not unique to my school’s band, and the Swing Girls’ dedication is not unique to the cast of that film. If kids take up an instrument here, they don’t simply muddle through for the sake of being part of it. They train themselves and each other into creating the crispest sounds and the tightest beats they can. Not one of them is older than 15, and their music teacher rarely shows up at practice. They read the score, and make it sound as it should. Simple really.

Last night I went bowling with the Dudes (the big people in charge of me and everyone else involved in education in Hikari), and had a really great time. Needless to say my performance afforded me the wooden spoon, although that wooden spoon came in the shape of a nice box of biscuits so I’m not complaining.

Bowling was followed by a particularly raucous enkai*, where I got to sit next to two of my favourite Dudes. There is no reason why they should be my favourite, as I had barely spoken to either of them prior to last night. They just have very nice faces and give Jess and I especially cheery ‘Ohaiyo gozaimasu’s. And last night I managed to pull off most of the evening chatting to them in Japanese, which is an immensely satisfying feeling. Everyone at the top end of Hikari education is so lovely to Jess and I anyway; we see them a little bit like nice old uncles. Even though most of them don’t speak any English, we often feel like they’re both intrigued by and protective of us, and they always seem pleased to see us when we go and visit their office.

 I almost pulled out of last night as my weeks are getting busier, but I’m really glad I didn’t. I haven’t socialised with thaty group since the start of my stay in Hikari, and it was so good to do it and carry out most of my conversations in Japanese. One of the younger Dudes I was was sat next to invited me to meet his wife and three daughters, which I thought was really lovely. We even had some conversations that stepped the usual ‘Do you like Japanese food?’ safezone.

All this led me to feel especially bad, then, when one of my colleagues from said office told me they had been reading my blog recently (one lovely lady in our office who shall remain nameless is very good at English). I AM HAPPY GUYS, DON’T WORRY! A couple of times people at the enkai asked me if I was happy, with a look of genuine concern about them, and now I understand why. So onward to a more cheery Lucyweb, and enough with this whinging and a-moaning…

*Enkai (n): work’s drinking parties. Just about every employee in Japan will go to one at least once; most will do so regularly throughout the course of their working lives. I love the fact that all the Japanese people I’ve spoken to so far call it a ‘drinking party’ when referring to an enkai in English. I like that it isn’t pretending to be something more refined, nor a couple of casial drinks after work, but rather a function of working as hard as the Japanese do. Working hard and playing hard are what these guys seem to do best, be it grafting, bowling or boozing. Hurrah!

…Is OK. Having a good honk isn’t. This will take some getting used to, she thinks through clenched teeth…

The Japanese seem to like talking about the weather even more than the British. They also like to complain about it more. It’s a beautiful autumn day outside; the leaves are just starting to turn and the temperature is sitting at around 19 degrees, but still I am beckoned to agree that it’s ‘too hot’. ‘Atsui!’, I’ve noticed, is more just a general noise people make; not so much addressing anyone, just making small talk with the world. I wonder when the ‘Samui’s will start kicking in…. 

I still don’t quite know what the hell was going on at Murozumi festival. I understand it is typical of alot of Japanese (and they could only be Japanese) festivals - honoring of ancestors, hauling around of children and shrines, cute kids galore and general merriment. Oh yes, and loads of drunk men.

I think that’s one thing that amused me most about Murozumi (Murozomi, FYI, is a very pretty district in Hikari), was that there’s so much ceremony and yet so much inebriation - when my turn came to don the hapi and pull the shrine a stretch around town I was half-cut just on the smell that emanated from Murozmi’s burley revellers. For those of you wondering why I was not emitting said aroma, it was because a) I was somewhat hungover and b) women don’t always do the battered thing the way men do in Japan. But they do sometimes …:)

We’ve all been to weddings, and we’ve all met Catholics, and thus we all know booze and ceremony are by no means incompatible. The Japanese, however, bring a whole new meaning to the word ‘ceremony’. They love it. I can’t think of a party or event I’ve been to that hasn’t had an opening and closing ceremony accompanied by numerous and presumably heartfelt speeches of which I understand squat. So to see hundreds of blokes boozing in a temple in such a seemingly formal culture was both surprising and yet congruent with all the other gatherings I’ve attended so far.

Jess and I were particularly conspicuous that day. For all it was tiring, it was totally ace being chucked in (and I mean that - I was literally hauled into the parade at one stage) to the noisey festivities and experiencing, as our local friends like to bellow ’Japanese culture!’ It’s a shame I was so hungover. This weekend, however, I am hoping to attend the Fox Festival up the road, which apparently has something to do with some foxes getting married. I plan to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I believe the shrines are this time carried as opposed to wheeled, with regular biru pit-stops en route.

I’ll try and upload some videos soon so you can see for yourselves what it’s about, as it’s not the easiest of events to describe, or at least I’m too lazy to do so at length. I’ve popped a bunch of pics onto the gallery which should hopefully give you and idea of what it looked like.  The sounds, however, are a different matter. As much as the Japanese love booze and ceremony, if they want to make a noise they make it LOUD….

I wrote this post not long after having done the unthinkable by having a little cry at school. It was over a collection of relatively minor things, and  fortunately I don’t think anyone saw. While this post is by no means representative of how I feel about Japan most of the time, it was a kind of stream of consciousness explosion in my head which I had to get down on paper, and so thought I may as well share that experience with you, good readers. Sorry it isn’t the cheeriest, and it will be followed by some comments which overturn many of the angry things I said at the time but here goes….

             “Life here is getting difficult, and all the talk of ‘it’s only a year’ evokes an inoperable concept in this world where time passes so slowly, where so much of that time is just me, and where even the shortest of inane exchanges can make or break my day, and my sense of perspective is really struggling.

The fact is that there is behaviour among the students here which we simply would not tolerate in England, but there is also a line drawn when it comes to a respect for seniority. I, however, am excepted from this disciplinary boundary as I am Not Japanese. This makes me angry. I am angry that students are allowed to endlessly laugh at my expense and refuse to connect with me even when I talk to them in their own language simply because I am foreign. Sure, laugh at my weird dress sense or my stupid face; that’s warranted wherever you live in the world. They could make pretty much any personal joke at my expense and I would take it on the chin. But to have such and attitude towards ‘foreigners’ by definition, and for figures of seniority to as good as accept that stretches the boundaries of what I can tolerate when it come to cross-cultural understanding.

But tolerate I must, and with a warm heart and a genki demeanour”

Needless to say, as is the schizophrenic nature of my time here, I was offered a couple of lessons to teach at this point which (probably for the better) cut this entry short. I ended up having a great time and the above upset faded into the background.

I must overturn my accusations regarding students’ laughter at me ‘because I’m foreign’ and give them the respect they deserve a) as teenagers, who are prone to laugh uncontrollably at any old guff and b) as very nervous students who are not raised in an environment where getting it wrong is so acceptable, and so the best way to deal with anxiety of me possibly pouncing on them and expecting the Queen’s English is to giggle.  In actual fact, any negative thoughts that occur during my time as an ALT very seldom are to do with the students. The more time I spend with them the genkier I get and it’s ace. It’s the dynamic betweem me, other staff and the students that causes problems sometimes, but I am gradually working out ways to cope with the differing expectations here, and am changing my expectations of myself - for the better, I hope.

One great pleasure that comes from being in a country where I understand probably about 10% of what’s happening most of the time is finding feelings of genuine endearment towards people I barely know at all, if we take verbal communication as the only real means by which we can connect with others. As I write this, I’m thinking in particular of one of my vice-principal, who for convenience we’ll call Terry.

Terry is a  sqaure fellow physically; taller than your average Japanese, and built all at right-angles, including a well-chiselled barnet turning the whiter shades of grey. Originally a PE teacher, he sports a fine array of tracksuits most days and isn’t afraid to flash the odd sovereign ring here and there. Is the alias of ’Terry’ starting to make more sense now?

 I first met him properly at sport’s day back at the start of September. He pulled up a pew for me next to him, and despite the disgusting and inescapable heat to which I was still not yet accustomed, I immediately felt at ease and comfortable in his company. At that point my Japanese was as good as non-existent, but he was the first person I met with whom I felt I could try anything and it would be well-received. His countenance is at first a little intimidating, but his laugh is bellowed across the staff room approx. every 15 minutes, and his knowing smile lets you know you’re definitely in on his joke. Even me.

Not so long ago, I was scrubbing under a desk in the staffroom (no the ALT isn’t yet just the general dogsbody - staff and students clean the school together in Japan), when I heard my name mentioned a few times by some 3-nensei (about 14-year-old) boys in the room. Obviously I hear my name quite a bit here without a clue as to the context in which it is being said, but when I emerged from under the desk I caught a general drift: Terry had picked up one of them by his breast - yes, his boy-breast - literally off the ground, and was giving him a good old telling off about something and that something was to do with me. He put him down, had a giggle, and just before the young whipper-snapper had time to escape he grabbed him by the family jewels and said something to the effect of ’say that again and it’ll be them next time’*. He laughed again, gave me a heads-up, and not long afterwards bought me an ice-cream.

I have spent quite a bit of time with Terry at this school owing to the amount of staff-room time I have - in Japan the vice-principals as good as live in the staff-room and seem to have a much nicer time than British deputy-heads, as they seem to spend most of the day chewing the fat with whoever happens to be around. That said, it’s only in the past couple of weeks that Terry and I have chewed much fat; I’ve had a very nervous time recently and plucking up the courage to try out my Japanese really makes me empathise with how nervous my students get talking to me. Yet the conversations we are now managing to piece together are perfectly comfortable, and I really feel like he’s looking out for me. Other colleagues in Japan certainly gave that air for my first few weeks here, but naturally they’ve got more important things to think about and soon enough me and my incompetencies fade into the background a little. I know everyone I work with would help me if I needed it, but old Tez seems to have made it his business to take me under his wing and include me. Some days it feels quite sad that the smallest of human exchanges can make my day here, as it shows how isolated I am sometimes. But in quite another sense, it shows how, in the words of a writer living in Japan named David Mitchell, ‘the casing of the human condition sometimes runs transparent, like a see-through Swatch’. Not sure about the product placement, but reading Mitchell’s article  (see http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/1100/mitchell/essay.html ) put words to things I was having real trouble articulating. I have been told that the Japanese do not have so great a concern with constant chat as we do in the West, and so I should not feel so awkard about how little banter I am able to proffer.

Reliance on non-verbal communication to form bonds with people  has bred within me both paranoia (more on that later) and feelings exultation at the commonalities we share as human beings. I have enough Japanese to function, but insufficient to show fully my intentions, my real feelings about certain situations and essentially who I am. So my peers have to rely on the same methods as I do and slowly we start to piece the puzzle together. Terry and others have helped me see the despite the knock-backs and countless faux-pas, just one exchange in which both parties can feel they’ve been heard and understood makes the effort worth it.

*Jovial violence is generally accepted in Japanese schools, as is sleeping in lessons. If anything, snoozey seito give teachers a further excuse to slap students, only for the latter to return to their prostrate position minutes later.