We are Safe!

I know I have posted in months, but I just wanted everyone to know that David, my mom (who is visiting) and I are all safe.  We are far enough away from the coast and the nuclear power plants to be mostly unaffected (other than the sheer terror of an earthquake that big).  Our city is fine and after 24 hours things are starting to return to normal.  If there is anything to update I will try to post something here as well as Facebook.

Ghostly Japan

Here is the long awaited Halloween post from David! Enjoy!

They say Japan is haunted. The entirety of it, tip to tip. Ghosts are everywhere, demons are numerous and spirits are plentiful. We`ve heard tale of random disappearances, spectral sightings and other incidents that require the attention of Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, Dan Akroyd and Bill Murry (Yeah, those were the Ghostbusters). Ask anyone one on the street here and they will likely say that Japan is the most haunted series of islands on earth. They might be right but I have yet to see any proof. And I have been looking.

I`ve heard the ‘most haunted’ claim before. When I lived in Hawaii all my friends told ghost stories, many of which they said happened to them first hand. Stories about something unseen sitting of their chest while they sleep, stories about long dead Hawaiian Kings and the tribes they forced off cliffs, stories about the volcano goddess randomly appearing in cars and causing them to crash. In addition to being fun to listen to, these stories always had an air of validity about them. This is mostly because the island of Oahu actually feels haunted. Not all of it of course, the beach resorts, the giant shopping malls, the countless ABC stores don`t. But away from the tourist areas things can feel a little eerie. The old Pali highway is a prime example. It`s also called the Nuʻuanu Pali, and there are some strange stories about traversing it and some dark tales from its past.

The road is ancient and has been heavily used for it is nice and low, easy traversable pass connecting two sides of the island. It`s history is surprising sordid considering no one thinks of Hawaii as a place where horrific bloody battles took place, but the Nuʻuanu Pali was the site where King Kamehameha, the king who unified the Hawaiian islands and created the Kingdom of Hawaii, finished his conquest of Oahu. He also made 400 enemy troops walk off a cliff to their deaths. Not something one tends to think about while enjoying the view off the Pali lookout. Later, when the highway was built it said that the workers found some 800 skulls.

I lived right near where all this happened.

In addition to the history of the Old Pali, there are also the ghost stories that are told by the travelers over it. Stories about beautiful women leading men to their deaths and the Goddess Pele smiting those who dare to bring pork travelling on the road. My friend didn`t know that bring pork over the Pali offended Pele but then his car broke down and then his radio and then series of unlucky coincidental occurrences caused him, at the suggestion of our Hawaiian friend, to perform some sort of redemption ritual off the side of the Pali. Now I`m not saying I believed Pele was the cause of his unlucky streak, the kid seemed to bring misfortune on himself, but I did go along to watch. How many chances would I have to see an ancient Hawaiian ritual performed because someone was eating a pork sandwich while driving?

Again, I lived right near here; I had to take this road almost every day. Things felt slightly eerie. The ghost stories, whether I believed them or not felt appropriate, they fit the surroundings, the creeping feelings of terror one felt while waiting for the bus on a foggy dark road felt justified. There is a similar feel about Japan.

If you are familiar with Japanese history you know how bloody it is. That might be the reason why there are so many Japanese ghost stories. And these stories are common. Just look at some of the films Japan has exported over the past few years. Ringu and Ju-on may have been remade into The Ring and The Grudge and tailored for American audiences but they are inherently Japanese stories. The American versions of these are terrifying, they are the sort of movies that can keep you up for days, psychologically scare you and cause you to never watch a VHS tape or move into a new house. The original Japanese versions of these movies are even scarier. Ringu, which is based on a book by the same name which is in turn drawn from Banchō Sarayashiki and stories of the woman in the well; an old Japanese folktales from the Edo period. There are thousands of stories just like this throughout the county. On top of this Japan has embraced these ghost stories, the woman in the well has made an appearance in a number of literary works and a few plays, not only in Ringu.

Beyond the stories and culture, many places in Japan just feel haunted.

The town of Imaichi, where my apartment is, is technically a part the City of Nikko, Japan. It`s considered a great tourist town and has been for 400 or so years. There are Japanese Onsens, or hot springs baths, amazing hiking trails and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is also the burial place of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was one of the unifiers of Japan. He helped end years civil war and found the Tokugawa shogunate. He`s also considered something of a murderous tyrant. He attacked the husband of his granddaughter, forced him and his mother to commit seppuku and then burned his castle down. Ieyasu died a year later. This was one of his last acts on his long and bloody road to power. He`s just up the road from me. A long old road lined with ancient cedars. I often walk along this road on my way to and from work.

It`s very easy to imagine ghost walking along this road at night. The trees tower above you, block out any light from stars or the moon. An ancient rock wall lines it on both sides. And when it`s past a certain hour, there next no cars or people using but me. Beyond that there is a long partially lit pathway. The train tracks run alongside it. There are three light poles bunched all together. Their light only goes so far and once one walks past it they make long shadows out of everything. The next set of lights is at the railway crossing, which is at the end of the path. Those lights are red and only on when a train is coming and that’s rare. Once or twice an hour. Fields of rice mirror the tracks on the other side of the path. The rice fields are deep; the earth seems to sink down a foot or so. Where the rice meets the soil is lower than where my feet meet pavement. Frankly, it looks like a perfect place to hide. During the day this is perfectly peaceful walk, at night it can be a bit unsettling.

As a tourist town, Nikko has its fair share of hotels. The first one I see when getting off the train is four stories tall, boasts the Sakura Café, has a rooftop garden and a large parking lot. It is also completely empty. The first time I passed it I felt uneasy but I didn’t realize that there was no one inside it until after a month or so of living here. It took me a while to put all the signs together and realize it`s closed. All the curtains and blinds are drawn and have been for long time and there has never been a car in the parking lot, which has a long chain running across its entrance. The rooftop garden has grown wild.

Oh, and the front doors are locked.

They are the large glass automatic type. When I went to check them I could see into the hotel lobby. It was dark and devoid of life but it was hardly empty. It has all the things a hotel lobby needs, front desk, chairs, a coffee table. They were all just a little out of date, a little out of fashion. When peering through the blinds of the café I found a similar sight. It looks like it was closed in a hurry. And there is only one explanation for it; it`s believed to be haunted.

Now, I know there are other possible reasons the hotel is the way it is. It could have closed because there weren`t enough guests, the hotel went bankrupt and many other logical excuses. But anyone who rides on the weekend train can see there are more than enough tourists to fill it. Beyond that, the hotel a block or so down always has a full parking lot. And why hasn`t it been sold? Why is there no sign trying to sell it? There`s not even a sign indicating that it`s closed.

While the hotel is a bit eerie, there is an old house in the city that is simply frightening. Sarah`s apartment is a few blocks from Utsunomiya station, a major train hub for the region. There are a large number of bars, restaurants and clubs within a five minute walk from her front door, not to mention the countless office and apartment buildings. This house does not belong in this sort of neighborhood.

It`s on the same block as Sarah`s building. It would be a great place if it wasn`t falling apart, and possible filled with vengeful spirits. The first thing I noticed about it was the vending machine out front. It`s an old Pepsi machine. But it`s unlike the countless other machines I`ve seen throughout the country. First off, it only has four selections; most have at least 8 if not more. Secondly, the prices are the lowest I`ve seen. The largest differences are that it`s empty, unplugged and encased in ivy. It`s actually easy to miss when strolling by, leaves cover at least three quarters of it.

The house it sits in front of, from all appearances, is abandoned. It has two floors, three large garage doors that when opened would expose what used to be a shop of some sort. One of which has a large dent in it making it impossible to open. The peach color of the house seems to have been rubbed away in places and has been replaced with a dark grey color. Perched atop the house is an ancient TV antenna, slowly rusting and aging with the house. Plants grow around it, weeds gone unchecked surround the only visible door, which has no knob. As far as I can tell there is no actual way into the house. On top of it all, as Sarah pointed out to me, there is a strange smell that hangs about the place.

The scariest bit about the house, worse than the fact that it has no entrance, is that there are still curtains hanging in the windows on the second floor. They are not drawn or fully open but somewhere in between. They are placed just so, when passing, you can see just enough of the inside, which is just as decrepit as the outside. I`m reluctant to use the phrase ‘sinister aura’ here, but at risk of sounding like a one of those awful medium shows, there is a strong sinister aura about the place. I always look up through the second floor windows expecting some sort of spectral vision to peer back at me through the curtains.

Of course similar arguments that applied to the hotel apply here as well. The owner went bankrupt, lost the house or there was a fire or something along those lines. However, this is Japan, the country where they are tearing down an old beloved Kabuki theater to make way for a new Kabuki theater/office tower. Someone would have bought it, leveled it and turned it into something else except for the fact that it`s haunted and everyone knows that if you tear down a haunted building and replace it with something new, the new structure is just as haunted or more so than the first one.

Now, I know I just spent a great deal of time insinuating that these places I described are haunted, if not outright claiming so but I don`t think it`s really all that important if they are or not. What is important is that they feel haunted. They are creepy, they make the hair on the back of your neck stand up and they you fill you with a sense of unease. It doesn`t matter if ghosts or spirits or whatever lurk unseen in these places, beyond that, it doesn`t even matter whether or not these things are in fact real. Haunted buildings and ghost stories have very little to do with reality. It`s about the feeling they give you, they way they can take hold of your imagination.

So, is Japan the most haunted country on earth? Well, maybe. I haven`t seen any ghosts or anything but it certainly feels like it should be haunted. The ghost stories feel appropriate and there is an abundance of places that fill a person with ‘the creeps,’ and that certainly helps Japan`s reputation as the most haunted series of islands in the world.

David A. Graham

Lost in Translation

One of my favorite movies of all time is Lost in Translation.  For those of you who have never seen it, please watch it as soon as possible.  It's a beautiful film by Sofia Coppola starring Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray.  David and I share a love of this movie for many reasons.  It's about finding yourself in Japan and getting lost along the way.  It's about cultural and generational differences and similarities.  It's also a beautiful portrait of an amazing city.  David and I spent last weekend in Tokyo and it was everything Lost in Translation led me to believe it would be.  Fast paced and energetic, slow and meditative, enormous and exciting.  Tokyo was everything a city can be.  Suffice to say, David and I had a wonderful time.  Unfortunately, I forgot my SD card for my camera, so I was only able to take pictures after a stop to Akihabara to get a new one.  However, the pictures I did get turned out pretty well.  Click here for all the photos from the trip.  Of all the wonderful things we did on the trip, the best was discovering how close we are to Tokyo, how cheap it is to get there and realizing we would be back soon and often. A 90 minute train ride from Utsunomiya found us in Ueno Terminal in the north of Tokyo.  A short subway ride later we were at our hotel in Akasaka, a trendy upscale neighborhood.  We spent most of our first day lamenting the missing SD card and looking for a camera shop. We were mostly unsuccessful in finding a camera shop, but wandered around the side streets of various neighborhoods and ended up stumbling on what looked like the entrance to a magical forest in the middle of the largest city in the world.  It ended up being just that.  Meiji Shrine is one of the largest shrines in Tokyo and is located at the heart of a densely wooded are of Yoyogi Park.  The Canopy of the trees blocked out the sun and gave a chill to the air.  The path was wide enough for a crowds of thousands to make their way to the shrine, which the occasionally do.  However, there were very few people in the shrine grounds on the day we were there.  Yet, as open as the path before us was, the enormity of the trees around us gave the forest an intimate feeling.  Rays of sun would occasionally peek through the branches and leaves, making me swear I had seen something out of the corner of my eye. In the very center of the park, two paths cross and there are no trees for a hundred feet, letting you see the sky for a moment before walking back into the cool darkness of the forest on the other side.  The entrances and exits of the shrine grounds are marked by torii gates, traditional Japanese Shinto gates like this one.

This is a torii in Utsunomiya.  The torii at the Meiji Shrine, however, were hundreds of feet tall.  Passing through these massive gateways truly made it feel as though were entering another world. At the other end of the park, we left the forest to find ourselves in the middle of Harajuku, the fashion capital of Japan.  Going from this natural sanctuary to the hustle and bustle of a busy urban street was jarring, but is the essence of Tokyo.  High rises and shrines nestled side by side.  Women in suits ride the subway sitting next to women in kimonos.  

After our adventures wandering through Yoyogi and Harajuku, we decided to head to Akihabara where we would be sure to find an SD card.  Akihabara, also known as Electric Town, was once the post-WWII black market for radio parts.  It has now become THE place to buy any kind of electronics.  From huge department stores to tiny shops down side alleys, you can buy anything you need to build your own computer, robot or anything electronic you can think of. Akihabara is also the otaku district.  Otaku is the Japanese word for nerd or shut-in.  Here in Japan, just as in America, the word nerd has been reclaimed - people are proud to be geeky.  So, you can also find any anime or video game related item you can think of.  There are even themed cafes centered around various shows and games.

The next day in Tokyo saw my dreams of seeing traditional Japanese theatre come true.  David and I saw two Kabuki plays at the National Theatre of Japan.  It was fascinating and beautiful.  We were greatly helped by our earphone translator which let us know what exactly was happening. We were not the only ones wearing them, though.  As well as the handful of other tourists in audience, many Japanese audience members were wearing translators as well.  The language in kabuki is often archaic, similar to Shakespeare in English.  The acting style also involves intense intonation and rhythmic stylization, rendering much of the Japanese difficult for even native Japanese speakers to understand. Kabuki is a style of theatre focusing on the visual poetry of performance.  It is a presentational form of theatre rather than a representational one.  In Western theatre, we strive to represent reality or tell a particular story.  Kabuki mostly uses stories incredibly well-known to their Japanese audiences. People don't come to have a story told to them, they already know the ending.  They come to see the representation of the story.  The beautiful costumes, the skill of the actors voicing melodramatic moments in time and the magic of theatre special effects.  Thus, it is very difficult for Western audiences to understand and appreciate Kabuki. However, as a theatre history geek and perpetual academic, I was in heaven!

After four hours of theatre, which is exhausting for even the seasoned theatre veteran, we were ready for some sightseeing before we had dinner and headed home.  We made a quick stop at Tokyo Tower.  Once the tallest structure in the city, Tokyo Tower is now being replaced by the Tokyo Sky Tree (not yet completed). It is no longer tall enough to get a TV signal over the high rises of Tokyo.   However, it is still really tall and pretty spectacular to see.  Exactly 13 meters taller than the Eiffel Tower, it seems to exist only to out do other attractions.  And to broadcast TV and Radio signals.   A friend told us make sure we saw it at night, and I'm glad we stayed until it got dark.

I'm pretty proud of the night photo - David called it "postcard-worthy."

We finished our weekend at a kaiten sushi restaurant that had been recommended on the internet. Kaiten sushi is conveyor belt sushi, where sushi chefs stand around making sushi and placing it on a conveyor belt that circles the restaurant.  You just grab what looks good and at the end of the meal they count the number of plates you have.  Different colored plates cost different amounts, which are posted on a wall somewhere.  If you don't see the exact kind of sushi you want you can also yell out the kind of sushi you would like and the sushi chef will make it right away and hand it to you over the counter.  The sushi was delicious, and with our bellies full we paid the bill - less than 20 dollars each.  The joys of living in Japan!

We caught a a train home and were back in friendly Utsunomiya in 104 minutes (we got the slow train). The trip was great, but coming home was also pretty wonderful.  Arriving at the apartment and taking off our shoes, we felt like we were back home - which I suppose means we are finally settled in.  I hope everyone is well wherever you happen to be in the world!

さよなら！

(sayonara!)

Sarah

A Good Day in Utsunomiya...

So, I thought I should post something since I haven't had any updates for a while.  Nothing terribly exciting or out of the blue has happened since my first earthquake, but David and I did have a pretty good day out in Utsunomiya.  We both had the day off and thought we would use our time shopping for new pants! I really need a new pair of jeans and this provided a good excuse to go downtown.  Well - I didn't find any pants.  I did, however, visit a Shinto shrine, see three open air concerts, eat cheap, delicious sushi and have two separate successful conversations in Japanese! Here are some pictures from today. Click on the link for photos and some videos! I will caption them soon - I promise! The video of the a capella group has one of our Japanese conversations in the background if you listen closely...

David has promised a ghost-themed blog post for Halloween, so keep your eyes peeled! We are going to Tokyo next weekend (my first time!).  There will be lots of pictures and another lengthy blog post after that!

Hope you are well wherever you are!

Sayonara!

My First Earthquake!

So.  It has finally happened.  My first earthquake.  There I was sitting in my classroom a few minutes before class started  with a couple of students.  Then the building creaked and I felt something.  It wasn't really a shake so much as a small hiccup.  I wouldn't have thought twice about it , but my students looked up at each other and one said "Jishin?"  The other student nodded in agreement and they went back to their writing undisturbed.  I recognized the Japanese word for earthquake and began as my students, half in English and half in Japanese, "Was that an earthquake? Jishin?" They said yes and looked at me as a crazy person as I giggled and started looking out the windows.  The earthquake (click here for the USGS data on it) as a whopping 5.6 on the Richter scale, which is actually fairly large and can damage poorly constructed buildings.  It was, however, 75 kilometers (45 miles) away, so we were barely affected.  Apparently people felt it as far away as Tokyo.  A 5.6 earthquake might be big news to me, but it didn't even make local news here.  I could only find evidence that I didn't imagine it on the USGS earthquake site.  Well, that chapter of "Firsts in Japan" complete, I must wrap up and go to bed.  However, this was exciting enough to warrant a blog post immediately.  For those who are interested, David didn't feel it, he was at a school a bit farther away today.  I will write a longer, more interesting post later, but for now, sayonara!

Cheese Tara and Other Joys

This is cheese tara.  I bought this particular pack from the 7-11 down the street.  I'm sure there will be an entire blog post dedicated to the wonders of a Japanese convenience store, but this is not that particular post. So, I will leave my description of convenience stores to this, for now: they are everywhere and you can buy anything at them.  Today, however, I was in the mood for some Mitsuya Cider (soda that tastes vaguely of pears and vanilla) and some delicious cheese tara.  What is cheese tara, one might ask.  Until 10 minutes ago, I would not have answered your question correctly.  The Japanese have developed a recent culinary obsession with cheese.  Not real cheese, mind you, but the fake kind, in the vein of kraft singles and string cheese.  Often cheese snacks are eaten with beer or sake, similar to pub mix or cocktail peanuts in the States.  I have been eating these snacks since I arrived, but particularly enjoyed the variety I now know to be cheese tara.  To me, they looked like camembert or brie sliced very thin, with the papery rind on the top and bottom.  I love cheese, probably a little too much for waistline's sake, but we all have our guilty pleasures.  Combined with the fact that my significant other hates cheese in almost all its forms (gasps in disgust are welcome here), eating cheese is a wonderful event that I can selfishly enjoy without the need to share it with anyone.  So, when "Japanese cheese" was brought to my attention, I simply had to try it.

 My love affair with cheese tara began. However, I couldn't help but wonder why the cheese tasted so different from any cheese I had before.  There was certainly a processed quality about it, but that I knew as familiar.  No, there was something strange in this taste.  Something I had tasted before, but never in cheese... was it nutty... no... was it possibly the richness of truffles I was tasting... no, and if it was I was getting a bargain, these packs only cost 180 yen... I let the unknown taste pass from my thoughts and contently enjoyed eating my cheese.  Today, I bought my pack of cheese tara and a soda, and began to inspect the label.  I was so happy that I had progressed in Japanese enough to be able to read the Japanese "cheezu" in katakana script.  The next symbol (tara) was in kanji, which I probably will never be able to read. But it had the hirigana of "tara" above it to help out those of us who don't read kanji (Thank you 7-11!).  I wondered what tara meant.  It was a Japanese words, as it was in hirigana and it was an old enough word to have a kanji of its own.  I thought, maybe it means snack or lite treat.  No.  My curiosity led me to the internet.  Tara translates to codfish. Cod.  A fish I had eaten many times.  All of the sudden the unidentifiable taste in my cheese tara was very clear to me.  As it turns out, cheese tara, or fish cheese as I will begin to call it, is actually processed cheese mixed with ground up dried cod and rolled into flat sheets and sliced up to be eaten as a snack with your beer or sake.  Hmmm. At first, I was hesitant to eat the cheese tara anymore, as I was now aware that it wasn't really cheese.  But, I do really like it and there are certainly stranger things you can eat this world, and I've eaten a few myself.  Is fish cheese really any stranger than horse meat or sheep intestines?  No.  I have decided that it definitively is not.  So I will carry on eating my newfound snack and will probably miss it when I am back in the States. If you are ever in Japan, please try the fish cheese.  It's delicious.

That epic tale being told, I've decided to post a list of my goals and hopes for my time in Japan.  This is far less about being cheesy (oh do I love bad and poorly executed puns) or gushy.  This is a completely selfish desire to let into the world my list of goals while in Japan so that I will feel guilty if I do not complete them.  You are now a witness to my list of things to be accomplished while in Japan.  Please nag me.  I really want all of these to happen.  Also, any hints or advice on completing them will be warmly received.

My Japanese To Do List

1. Climb Mt. Fuji.  While number one on my list, this probably one of the last things I will do in Japan.  Not only would it be a nice cap to a year living here, but the climbing season is only six weeks in late summer.  So, in August of next year, I will see the sunrise from atop Mt. Fuji, most sacred mountain in Japan.

2. Learn Japanese.  I will break this down into my two goals for learning Japanese language.
        
        2a. Be able to go to a restaurant, be seated, order my food and pay my bill entirely in Japanese, in full sentences while understanding what is being said to me.  Now this is the first of my goals, and may sound simple, but Japanese is a difficult language, and I have not, as of yet, found the time and energy to really commit to studying it properly. I am, however, determined to complete this goal in the next 3 months or so.
        
        2b. Be able to read a full length Japanese play (probably not in Kanji, though) and understand it.  This will be much more difficult, and might be near impossible, but I really want to be proficient in Japanese, and possibly study the language enough to be able to translate, one of my personal academic interests.

3. Go to a Karaoke bar in Tokyo and rock it out Frank Sinatra style.  Anyone who has been to karaoke with me in the states knows that I favor singing "Mac the Knife."  I want to do this Tokyo.  This won't be hard as I live a little over an hour from the largest city in the world.  This is most certainly not the only thing I want to do in Tokyo, but it will get me there and singing karaoke in the land of its invention.

4. Be a tourist.  With the map, the camera and possibly the Hawaiian shirt.  This can happen anywhere, but I think it should.  Not entirely sure why.

5.  Go to Okinawa and see the place my grandfather came during World War II.

6.  See 100 shrines and temples.  The history of Buddhism and Shinto and particularly where they overlap is very interesting to me.  Also, there is truly something sacred and divine about these places and like thousands of generations before me, I feel it is worthy to seek them out.

7. Go skiing in the Japanese Alps.  The skiing is supposedly pretty good here.  I would love to go up to Hokkaido, where they have best snow in the world, but anywhere will do.

8. See at least one event of every traditional Japanese performance style.  Many of you know I was largely drawn to Japan by its traditional theatre.  So, I will see at least one performance each of noh, kyogen, kabuki, bunraku, shinto dance, and manzai while I am here.

9.  Study Noh theatre with a professional.

10. Go to Hiroshima and see the Peace Memorial Museum that remembers and commemorates the victims and survivors of the atomic bomb.

11. Relax in an onsen, preferably the ones the wild monkeys use to keep warm.  This would accomplish two of my goals at once: going to an onsen and seeing wild monkeys.  Onsens are natural hot springs that have been turned into public bath houses.  Very traditional and apparently very good for you.

12. Attend a Cherry Blossom Festival and take part in a hanami (cherry blossom viewing) in Shinjuku Gyoen.  This garden in Tokyo is famous for its sakura (cherry blossoms).

13. Go hiking in Nikko National Park.  I do live right next to it and I miss hiking. I suppose part of me will always be in Colorado.

14.  Eat as much delicious Japanese food as I can! This one needs no explanation.

I think I will leave it at 14 for now, but I will probably update the list every now and then. I hope everyone is well wherever you are.  Sayonara!

A Day in the Life of a Peppy Teacher!

Hello from the land of Tropical Storm Henry!  The storm dissipated a few days ago, and never made it to typhoon status, but I was really hoping to experience my first typhoon.  Unfortunately (for me, fortunately for the rest of the people living here) Henry slightly missed Tochigi and was nearly done by the time it got near us.  We just got a couple hours of steady rain.  Oh well. My colleagues have promised me that typhoon season is not over, so I still have a chance! Peppy Kids Club did consider canceling Tochigi Prefecture lessons, but then decided against it, so my day continued on as normal.  Well, as normal as any Peppy teacher’s day can really be.  I sang some funny songs (including the longest version of Old MacDonald Had A Farm ever recorded), danced some silly dances (including pretending to be a number of barn animals for the previously mentioned song) and helped children wrestle with the language I am rapidly determining is the most difficult you can try to learn. 

Now, I most certainly have my fair share of difficulties learning Japanese, but at least Japanese makes a little bit of sense.  There are many rules and you follow all of them, all the time.  Yet, as we all have been taught since elementary school, English is a language made of exceptions. Imagine trying to explain to 8 year olds why JapanESE are people from Japan , but people from the United States of America  are called AmeriCANS, or why English only uses counters for a select few occasions.  One of my favorite, and most infuriating, parts of the Japanese language, is that every kind of object has a different counter.  Round objects are counted one way, money another, and cylindrical objects in yet another.  Chopsticks (ohashi) have their own unique counter, not used by any other word in the language.  Now, the counters we have in English are few and far between. A slice is one.  You don’t ask for 2 bread, you ask for 2 slices of bread.  So, although I can count, I still sound like a 3 year old when referring to any number of objects.  However maddening this might be, I do have a healthy respect for the amount of deliberation and precision that goes into speaking Japanese.  You must think about how you are going to say something, not just about subject at hand.  This also provides for Japanese to be the language of subtlety.  Carefully chosen degrees of politeness and specific descriptive words are used to give context and meaning.  One can speak volumes in a simple sentence.  If only I could decipher the intent.  That, however, seems to be something that even the most experienced listener and speaker of Japanese is still grappling with.  I sometimes wonder if the speaker is always aware of all the repercussions of their chosen words.

With regards to teaching English, especially with the younger students, I find it is better, and most certainly easier, to not emphasize the exceptions, or even the rules, but instead focus on the parts of English that I have the unique position in their lives to really improve.  As a native English speaker, often the only one these children have access to, I can help students with pronunciation, listening, comprehension and speaking more than almost all of my Japanese counterparts.  As I speak little to no Japanese, I can’t actually explain grammar to these students.  I can, however, demonstrate it in real use.  Sometimes this is effective, sometimes the student leaves more confused than they arrive.  That is the dilemma all teachers of a foreign language face. While Peppy Kids Club certainly has its faults, I think the model of Peppy education is a really valuable one.  They introduce children to English at a young age, focusing on comprehension and speaking over grammar and have 3 lessons a month taught by Japanese teachers, who can answer questions and communicate with the students in their own language, and 1 lesson a month taught by a Native speaker, who can improve the students understanding of the language as well as their global awareness.  So how do I actually do these things?  By being a NT or Native Teacher with Peppy Kids Club!

So what exactly do I do? Welcome to a day in the life of Peppy Teacher!

I wake up in the morning, often near the crack of noon, to prepare for my day.  This might include a trip to my new bank, the Japan Post  Office, to withdraw some money, or perhaps running errands such as buying a rice cooker (my plan for tomorrow).  Now, classes start at a different time each day.  I am given a schedule for each month detailing what lessons I am teaching at which schools.  Typically, I have 1 week at Utsunomiya Minami School followed by a week of office days, followed by a week at Utsunomiya Yotou School , followed by a week at Ujiie School.  Let’s say this is my week at Utsunomiya Minami School.  A week of lessons typically starts on Tuesday, as my normal weekend is Sundays and Mondays, and lessons normally start somewhere between 4 and 5pm.  On Tuesday I will have my first lesson starting at 5 pm.  Minami is about 25 min away from my apartment, so I will head to the train station around 2:00 pm.  I walk to the train station, 5 minutes away from my apartment, and then catch a train, typically within the first 10 min of arriving.  I take the train for a brief 5 min and get off at the first stop and begin my 15 min walk to the school.  The Suzumenomiya neighborhood, where this school is located, is a nice, quiet residential neighborhood.  I walk past the local elementary school, sometimes catching a bit of sports practice in the playground.  Next to a fruit store and laundromat is the Peppy Kids Club Classroom.  We call them classrooms and not schools because there is only ever one lesson going on at a time, as well as only one teacher in the school at a time.  This particular school looks like a storefront, though some seem to be designed to originally be restaurants or apartments.  Walking into the school is much like walking into an elementary or preschool in the US.  There are bright ABC’s on the wall and posters showing happy children doing a verb, with the word written out next to them.  Some Japanese teacher’s decorate their room with crafts the children have made or store bought posters.  I swear one of the posters saying “Welcome to School” is one that was in my kindergarten classroom.  I have arrived at the school by 2:30 pm (at least) and can start to prepare.  Now, we are only required to be at the school one hour before the start of lessons.  This is called “number one status” (why, I do not know).  We are on number one status until we have worked here for three months.  After that we are only required to be there 30 minutes prior to lessons and we don’t have to call to check in to confirm we are there.  I call Head Office in Nagoya as soon as I arrive to let them know I am there.  They normally thank me for being early and wish me good luck on my lessons.  Now I have 2.5 hours to prep for classes.  Most teachers learn how to prep lessons quicker the longer they work here and only show up one hour before.  I am still new to this, so I like to give myself ample time.  I get the materials I might need and put everything in order for the lessons. On Tuesdays at Minami I teach 2 Aqua Lessons and a PEP Talk lesson. All lessons at Peppy are an hour long with at least 15 minutes in between lessons.  I have anywhere from 1-5 lessons a day, but normally 2 or 3. At around 5 minutes to 5:00 pm my Aqua students arrive.  Peppy lessons are divided into 3 categories: Packet, Headway and Junior.  Packet Classes are the youngest and the levels are labeled by color.  Headway is the majority of the lessons I teach and are the Elementary to Middle School students. They are also divided into levels labeled by color.  Junior classes are middle school and a few young high school students and are given names to separate the level (PEP Talk, Pre-Step Up, Step Up, Junior English Pathways and Interchange).  So, my Aqua class is a Headway category class which is right in the middle of age groups and difficulty level.  The students are 10-11 years old.  There is a limit to 12 students per class, though I normally teach groups of 5-8.  As they come in I greet their parents and welcome the students into the classroom.  As students filter in, I am individually checking each student’s “Picture Cards” they have prepared.  They learn 2-10 flash cards each week and I stamp their book after they show me they know the cards.  I also check their homework from their Japanese teacher and give them their name tag.  Then I usually give them a worksheet or some other assignment (practice writing the ABC’s) for their “Welcome Activity.”  After everybody has done a picture card/homework check, it is normally 10 minutes into the lesson, so I lock the door.  I then help the students finish up the Welcome Activity and move onto attendance.  I normally try to get the students to do silly voices or action for attendance (this month I made them all say “I’m here!” like a gorilla. Hilarious!).  I then move into the Greeting Questions, when I play a game  and ask some questions I know the students already know.  For an Aqua class, I would probably do a Ball Toss game, and if you drop the ball, I ask you question such as “How’s the weather?” or “How old are you?”  Then we would move into the main part of the lesson.  I have the students do the chant or song and dance for the term we are in and sometimes play a game. I review the previous lesson’s material and then teach a new expression.  The new expression for the Aqua class last month was “How tall are you?” “I’m BLANK centimeters tall.”  I then play a game with the expression and try to have the students say it A LOT.  I then review an expression from quite a few lessons ago.  Sometimes this means re-teaching it, but if we have time, I will do another game.  I then do a section called Global Studies, where we learn about differences and similarities between cultures.  Last month Aqua learned about inches, which are only used in the US, Myanmar and Liberia. That was a really difficult one to explain without speaking Japanese.  Then I do a game with the phonics for that term.  Last month was silent e, and we did a race to group them into o-e, i-e, etc.  With five minutes to go, we quickly review the entire lesson and I assign homework (normally listening to a particular track on their CD at home).  They return their name tags, grab their bags, line up at the door and ask me if they may go home.  I normally have them answer one question in English before letting them leave, so their parents can see what we worked on that day.  I thank their parents in Japanese and wave goodbye until I can no longer see their cars.  Then it all starts over with the next lesson in about 10 min.  Repeat three times and my day is nearly complete.  I write a few lesson reports to let the JT (Japanese Teacher) know what happened during the lessons and write about any problems in the Communication Notebook, a written dialogue between JTs and NTs.  I clean up the classroom and catch my train home by 9:00 pm and am back in my apartment by 9:30pm.  David and I normally make dinner then, or on a particularly long or hard day go out to grab a bite to eat.  This happens five days of the week, 3 weeks of the month.  On my office days, I either cover for another teacher or prepare game materials in a nearby classroom.  However, mostly I am left to my own devices which suites me just fine. 

Now that was a fairly exhaustive account of David’s and my daily life, but I would be happy to answer any questions anybody has, as I have had quite a few people requesting this particular blog post.  David and I have LOVED our jobs so far.  The kids are great and teaching is really fun.  We really get paid to play with kids in English for an hour at time, which in my book, is pretty darn cool.  Till next time, sayonara!