The Whole Erk Catalogue Tales of a Geek Abroad

I had my Welcome Party on Wednesday night. It was a stressful affair! I dressed up in my suit, then rode my bicycle in the rain to city hall because I don't know where the Cultural Center is. The kyoikuchou - Big Chief of the Board of Education - drove me there. It is a locally famous building, because it was designed by some famous architect; it is quite impressive!

That reminds me, my spare bike is still at city hall.

I am not good with ceremonies in English, when I am at any kind of focus; being the sole focus of a ceremony in Japanese was gruelling. The sentiment was very necessary for Natori, though, and I really appreciated it. Kyoikuchou gave a speech which was quite funny, the bits I understood, and then I gave one that i had preprepared. Note to self: try very hard to say something meaningful next time I have to give a speech. With my lowly command of formal Japanese I wound up talking about what kinds of food I like and where in Canada I am from, and after Kyoikuchou's speech it felt quite juvenile. Perhaps I will compose and post some useful sentence templates for future speeches, both for myself and for other JETs, that can be adapted to many uses. I dunno. I am getting tired of saying 'I can eat pickles'.

Well, I have my first two classes out of the way. I am starting with 3rd years, and my first class is a brief presentation of Canada and then a powerpoint collection of photos of my friends and family. The very first class was a bit sleepy, but they warmed up and asked some questions and had fun at the end. The second class was a lot more exuberant (genki) and we had a fun time.

I have a hat shaped like a maple leaf and it went a long way towards breaking the ice in both classes. In the second class it got passed around and worn by the braver students, I have some funny pictures. So far no deep probing personal questions, and only one bunch of students have claimed to love me. I responded by showing them pictures of Jen which rapidly defused the situation; they were just as happy to ask if I was married and when I was going to get married and what kind of ring I would buy and if Jen was in Japan and if she would come to Japan and if she could eat natto.

So far, nobody has told me 'this is a pen'. I am actually a little disappointed. I get a LOT of 'herro' and 'goodu moaning!' in the halls which is pretty fun, it is nice to be able to make someone's day by grinning and saying good morning. Also, pronouncing my name seems to be a lot of fun. When Konno Sensei and I said goodbye to the class, there were a lot of 'goodbye ERIC!' shouts.

Today was my first real day of work. It started a bit rough: I was barely on time because I thought we started later than we do; now I know and knowing's half the battle. There was an assembly which was entirely over my head, and then I have a 12 second hello speech on the fly. I love Japanese. It's odd to have people complement me enthusiastically on a speech that was not only short, but rife with grammatical errors during its brief span. I honestly can't imagine how far one would have to go to be called BAD at japanese. I had fun conversations with my coworkers. They are interesting people. I am going to have to put a lot of effort into learning names; Japanese names are still fairly hard for me to remember, given that I have plenty of troubles with names in my native tongue.

Bill tells me that contractually I was early but realistically i should be in at around 8am, half an hour before I have to. Easy enough. Bill and I went out for a drink after work... it was nice to have *a drink* rather than get tanked for once.

Maria got accosted by Jehovah's Witnesses today. They gave her a couple pamphlets, one about how to cope with old age - Maria is 24 - and the other was about how to say 'no' to sex in high school... the contradiction seems to be lost. Apparently going to high school is akin to living on the set of an x-rated movie (a direct paraphrase of the pamphlet). 'Some people are lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of GOD.' Hells YEAH boyz. Wait is that a bad thing?

Not only are there Jehovah's Witnesses in Japan, but apparently as a matter of course they carry around English native-language pamphlets. Wow. Is that dedication or what?

I did my first bit of real work-related stuff these last few days: proofread a speech for a contest, and today coached the student (a 3rd year, 15 yr old grade 10 equivalent) in how to read it as naturally as possible. I was really impressed! She is a very enthusiastic student, she is honestly interested in learning English not just to pass exams but to actually talk to English people, and she put a ton of effort into wrapping her tongue around words like "cruelty" and "hard" and "grew". What a great day! The JTE [Japanese Teacher of English] and Konno-san [the student] had a lot of frustrated giggles as they both tried to curl their tongues to make an "r-oo" sound for "grew". "would" was also a fun one. They understand the basics now and I think Konno-san will come a very long way if she keeps practicing... heck, she's come a long way already. There were only a small handful of problem words in a 5 minute long speech. For a 15 year old that is incredible! When I was 15 I was still struggling to learn katakana, dammit.