Graduation (kind of)

'Tis the season! You would think that it is bizarre that I would be writing a graduation-like post in February, but it isn't. In Japan, the school year goes from April to March. Thus we are entering in to the last weeks of the school year. Turns out it must be the season for squid and squid-like animals as well. We have eaten squid or it's family members 2/4 days this week. Yay me. 

Our student government (I think) put on a program for the graduating 9th graders who are going to be entering high school in a few weeks. This meant that all the classes were cancelled on Monday afternoon so that we could have a 2 hour assembly with parents and whatnot. They sang songs and gave a bunch of speeches. It was really long good. 

One thing that they do right is that they had a graduating student speak about one teacher in front of everyone as they stood in a group. The student would call out the teachers name and then say lots of nice things about them. I presume they were thanking them. After we got through about 6 teachers, I wondered if they would do one for me. They did. A girl called out Mr. Jeffu. I straightened up and smiled so the people looking at me would know that I appreciated whatever they said. She started saying nice things in what I thought was Japanese. About halfway through, I realized that she was speaking English and I should really pay attention. She was speaking really fast and with an accent, so all I caught was "...stories from your country...Christmas...good example...make me want to learn..." I appreciated it anyway. 

The sweet setup on the cafeteria. They transformed it to look awesome right? 

I ran across this on Thursday at one of my elementary schools. Those are megaphones. Look how gigantic! They have their own tripod and everything. I don't think I can call anything smaller than this a megaphone in good conscience. I guess I will have to call the smaller ones miniphones or just phones. 

Ah, Japanese first graders. In the comedy that is my life, I eat with these kids once a month. Either there is a serious problem where the shortest kid in class is gone every time I eat with them, or they just like putting me in the smallest desk imaginable. That desk with nothing on it? Yep, that is the one I am supposed to sit at. Don't worry, they all found it hilarious when I sat next to it. To give you perspective, the desk top was lower than my knee.

Being the sweet kids that they are, they also decided to give me extra portions of lunch that day. The only problem was that yesterdays menu was cuttlefish and shrimp in an awful chili sauce. I watched as each of these kids took no more than 2 or 3 tiny pieces for themselves. When they dished up mine, they gave me about...25. 

We had rain yesterday and then some scary fog roll in. I took some pictures for you. 

*Spooooooky Nooooooises!*

I will probably have another graduation post for you, as the real graduation isn't for a few weeks. I have to wear a suit to the real one. 

Face Masking and the Quadra-kill

Fifteen yard penalty for illegal face mask. I like football, which is relatively unrelated to what I am talking about. In Japan, people wear face masks...all the time. Of the 15 people currently in the same room as me, 7 are wearing face masks. You get used to it after a while, but it really confused Brad when he came. Last week I was teaching the 5th graders and EVERY kid was wearing one. The teacher was too.

Though it looks like ground zero for a zombie infection movie, I am told that it is less sinister. The Japanese (and many Asian cultures I am told) wear face masks to avoid getting sick, or getting other people sick. If you have a cough, you wear a mask. If someone else has a cough, you wear a mask. If it is Tuesday...yep, you wear a mask. I like the idea behind it of helping people not get sick and not becoming sick yourself, but I will never do it. Why you ask?

Because of my super strong Gaijin immunities, I have not been really sick at all since coming to Japan. I see about 500 kids every week and they all want to touch me, yet I remain unaffected. Boom! They should use me for tests or something to create super soldiers. 

I had an interesting experience in class earlier. Being immune to disease and sickness does not make me immune to blemishes of the face (some would say that the whole face area is a blemish, but that is mean). I had a blemish which I cut while shaving. No biggie right? There was a nice red mark on my face though where the cut had been. My Japanese co-teacher found the best time to point that out in the class we were teaching (28 13-year-olds). The dialogue is as follows:

Furiya Sensei: Mr. Jeff, you have something on your face here. 

Me: Oh...I cut myself shaving.

Furiya Sensei: (gesturing to class and speaking loudly) He cut himself shaving! Ok!

Me: Uh...thanks.

Glad I could help in the teaching of these kids right? It was weird. 

Last point, the Quadra-kill. School lunch was pretty mellow today, some chicken, potatoes, spaghetti (not real spaghetti) and bread. I got thinking as I often do over lunch and I counted 4 animals that had to die for my school lunch. Take that PETA! There was pick, chicken, shrimp, and octopus. I am learning that the Japanese motto for food is: "If it moves, kill it and eat it." How else do you explain the Japanese being the ones to figure out how to eat Fugu? How many people had to die to get that one right? 

Lunchtime Lesson

Today I learned a series of valuable lessons. I will now outline them here for you. I learned them during lunchtime in the cafeteria of my junior high school. 

Lesson the First! First lesson is that while difficult, eating penne pasta with chopsticks can be quite gratifying. 

Lesson the Second! The second lesson is about the instructions we were delivered via PowerPoint for 20 minutes at the end of lunch. The lesson was on how to wash your hands. The lesson was presented in Japanese. I am not a doctor, but if the instructions made sense like I think they did in my head, the Japanese are on a whole other playing field when it comes to hand washing. If I were to rate them on an intensity scale of 1-10, they would receive a 9.7. They also followed this up with a lot of pictures of fingerprints. It was not an episode of CSI...I think. Lesson the Second was lost on me though. Why you ask? Because the Japanese have no paper towels in the bathroom. At all. I guess you are supposed to bring your own. 

Lesson the Third! The most important lesson came as I pondered over my bowl of soup. Today's soup was rather bland, relying primarily on the cabbage to bring the flavor train. The flavor train was delayed. Sure there were some potatoes in there too, but potatoes doesn't make something delicious. The best part of the soup was the cut up sausages in it. Japan really does sausages well by the way. This fact is important to the lesson.  

I, being wise and frugal, was saving the best part of the soup for last (the sausages). I like it because it leaves me feeling like I had something really good to eat, rather than something not very good with a few highlights. As I hoarded my sausage at the top of the bowl, what must have been a highly localized earthquake came and shook my seat only. This caused me to lose hold of the bowl and dump it out all over the table/floor. Due to the lack of towels mentioned in Lesson 2, I was stuck. I ended up getting some help and one teacher even got me a new bowl of soup. Alas, this bowl of soup lacked even one piece of sausage, and mine had rolled on the floor. 

So I came up with this philosophy as I choked down my garbage...er...cabbage. Life is a lot like soup. You can save up the good things until the end or 'later,' but you never know when you are going to lose hold of your soup (die). Therefore, you should take every opportunity to be wise with your sausages for they are the flavor of life. Take the opportunities as they come, and plan for ones in the future. I will leave it to you (faithful readers) to determine what the sausage of life is. For me, it is probably different than you. Essentially, take the opportunities you have in good time instead of pushing them off to tomorrow. 

Also. Wash your hands.

P.S. Have you ever eaten an orange that had seeds inside? I have not...until today. Why would you serve polluted fruit? I feel that as a planet, we deserve seedless oranges and grapes for all. 

3 Rounds with the Devil

Today I came toe to toe with the devil. I am somewhat ashamed to say that I had to go three rounds with this, the hellhound of Satan. Though this is not a dog, I could see this thing salivating when it looked at me. I am not one to lose my mind over bugs, no matter what earlier posts may suggest. For some reason, the whole country of Japan seems to be literally crawling with giant bugs that wish to devour my soul. When I saw this spider, I almost lost my mind. I screamed quite loud, and I am glad that I have no neighbors to hear me.

 Doesn't seem super scary right? Just a friendly ol' spider.

 FALSE! This spider is the hellchild of the devil and an octopus. Look at that thing in relation to the size of my rice cooker. I want to know one thing, how long has this spider been living in my house and where are its friends?!

After 3 rounds of fighting, I came off the victor. I first poisoned it with spray where it retreated to behind the refrigerator. He tried to trick me into leaving him alone, but I fought in the legendary spider wars of 2005. I was not fooled by this ruse, and calmly awaited for him to escape into the open (I am not sexist in referring to the spider, I merely believe that there is no way that something so hateful could be a female). 

After he charged me for ground surrounding the garbage cans, I held him off with another bout of poison. Poison is slow to act, and is good for slowing, but not instant death. Luckily, I earned my stripes in the spider wars and can improvise freely. I took my lighter and created a jet of fire that spewed forth and licked all 8 wicked legs of the beast, rendering it dead. 

You can see the coin for comparison in the picture. That coin is a little bigger than a quarter, and that suckers legs were shriveled and charred. 

 Then this happened. My neighbor has left her porch light on for a few days which has attracted moths. Moths are a bit of an understatement because these things have fur. 

 3 together, the unholy trinity.

 There is a sandwich tie for comparison on size. 

Ah...on to something not so horrible. I took a discreet picture of first graders managing the lunch cart to their classroom while wearing their little face masks and covers. They look like tiny little surgeons.  

 Friday lunch. See that little pinapple looking mystery vegetable that I hate so much? Photographic proof. 

 For Friday night, we went to a little cafe in the middle of nowhere. When I say middle of nowhere, I actually mean that it is about 20 minutes from the middle of nowhere. I couldn't get back there if I tried. 

 The inside is very comfortable and homey. 

 The folks that own this had their own pizza oven made. Awesome right? In a country where pizza is rare, this is like striking oil. 

Another view from the inside. Someday I would love to have a rec room that looks significantly like this room. If I someday acquire this room and find a spider in it, I will burn it to the ground. 

Tale of Two Lunches

Lunch the first. Friday, September 2nd. Nagasaka Junior High School

As I looked down at my tray that had been prepared for my by the students of the junior high, I had a bad feeling. Usually in these situations, I work back from the familiar. "Bread, I know what that is" "That there is some kind of chicken." On this day, I only recognized one thing. Pineapple. Not bad right? I could live with pineapple. Fruit is rare and expensive in Japan, so it usually acts as the dessert.

The plate had some kind of salad with chicken and green beans that can only be described as slimy. I am relatively sure that I recognized some part of an egg mixed in around with the chicken. Eggy and slimy. On to the soup-stuff. I have discovered that Friday at the junior high is basically "Eat with a spoon day." All of the dishes that they have on Friday are meant to be poured over a bed of rice and eaten with a spoon. I figured this out when I looked for my chopsticks and found only a spoon. Watching what the others did, I poured the stuff over the rice. The whole concoction was vaguely yellow and had the consistency of the liquid (or semi-liquid) that is left over in the turkey pan on Thanksgiving. I don't know about you, but I usually call that...slimy. I spotted a few hard boiled eggs kicking around in there like eyeballs. Eggy and slimy.

As for what else was in this turkey leftover concoction, I can't honestly tell you. I only recognized carrots and daikon. Daikon is a big root (or tuber) that the Japanese revere. It is kind of like a radish/potato. It isn't bad, but I won't be buying any soon. The other things looked like various medieval shapes. First off was a vegetable that looked like an octopus tentacle with suckers on all sides, then struck me as looking like a mace with rectangular points for bludgeoning. In this medieval medley there was a...food substance (though there is no way to be sure) that looked like side of a tiny gingerbread castle. It was cut in a way that made it look like it had battlements across one side where archers could shoot. I hesitate to say it was food because it had the texture of Styrofoam. In addition to the rest, there were at least 3 other things I didn't recognize, but I choked it down.

I am sure it is good for my character, and I bet my digestive tract is thankful for the insoluble fiber. I have resolved to find out what it is called and make sure that I bring a backup the next time lunch is brought to you by the words egg and slimy.

Lunch the second. Monday, September 5th. Nagasaka Junior High School

Even as I write this, the glory of the lunch recently eaten sits in my belly. As I looked at the plate, I could recognize every single thing I was being served. I saw white bread, chicken, potato salad (kind of) and egg soup. You may think, based on a recent run-in with eggs, that I am not a fan of egg. I assure you that I am, but not when they are slimy. With the bread was jam and butter in a package. I watched those around me to see how they would eat when I saw the head teacher squeeze the jam and jelly onto the piece of bread, slap the chicken and some potato on there and start going to town. Interesting, but not for me. I enjoy my flavors separately and allow my pallet to tie them together.

I used one piece of fine Japanese white bread as a counter balance for my soup, and put the butter and jelly on the other. The chicken, though small, was delicious. I don't know how the Japanese do it, but I have yet to have an un-juicy piece of chicken. Even the stuff I cook at home comes out bursting with juice. After my potato salad (with ham nonetheless) was finished, I moved on to my dessert. 3 green grapes. You may be thinking, as I was, that 3 grapes is a rather odd number to choose. Empowered by a meal eaten that I enjoyed and could recognize, I moved on to my grapes a little faster than the rest. I popped one of them into my mouth and bit down only to discover that the grape contained garbage.

Farbeit for me to criticize the Japanese on their grape production, but it was not what I expected. Most green grapes in this country are still sweet; this thing was tart and sour. These facts alone don't condemn the grape, but the seeds and stem in the middle do. The skin was also thick and unchewable. Not knowing about these things before hand, I just bit into it and started munching away. Initially, I thought I had broken a tooth on the evil Japanese sour "fruit." I discovered that it was just the 5 seeds inside. I know I have been lucky to have only seedless grapes before, and there is a reason...seeded grapes are too much work for not enough enjoyment. After spitting out my garbled pile of undigestibles, I threw the other two grapes away. Fool me once, strike one Fool me twice...strike three.