My Wonderful Weekend in October Part I

This man is a skilled ramen-chef and also a showman. He would take his ramen-paddle and throw noodles behind his back, catch them all, and them throw them back to his front with great ease. Then, as he would slide the ramen noodles into a bowl he would stare at someone sitting at his table, or at a few people, and he would make his eyes big and his mouth twitch like he was Charlie Chaplin. He made everyone at his table laugh, and during our 2 hour yakitori and ramen dinner we all laughed several times.

Earlier this month my distant cousins, Koki and Kazue, came from Tokyo to visit me in Fukuoka City. There Koki's friend from work, Taki-san, along with his wife and son Futa, gave us a tour of the city for a day, and a tour of the countryside of Kyushu the next day. I'll explain more of our trip to the countryside in my next entry, but first I have to describe what happened to us at this ramen-hut dinner.

If you can see what looks like a UFO on the upper edge, middle-right part of this photo, you are looking at a small pile of ramen, sailing over the ramen hut on the right side the picture. The chef asked me to stand up and go into the street with a ramen-paddle, and hold it out. Then, he took a pile of ramen and heaved it clear over the hut for me to catch. I was quite nervous at first, and the look of sheer concentration on my face, with my chin-out and my neck strained, should say a little about how much I wanted to succeed. People from other ramen-huts came over (we were on a street lined full with them) to check out the show. Well, when the ramen came down, I let it slip from the paddle and hit the dirty street. The chef quickly ran into the street, looked around, and grabbed the ramen to hurry it back to his hut. Then, he tossed a second pile over the hut. This time I caught a small amount in the paddle. Meanwhile, more people were gathering around and more photos were being taken of the foreigner with the ramen-paddle. The chef hucked his last pile of ramen, and on the third throw I caught most of the noodles. At this point the ramen- heavy odor in the air was accompanied by true excitement. I was being cheered on, especially by my family and friends.

Triumphant me.

From left to right: Kazue, me, Futa, Koki, and Taki-san.

Fukuoka City and Tenjin

Last weekend I went to a professional soccer game in Fukuoka city. The teams playing were the home team, representing Fukuoka, and a team from Yokohama. One of my new friends, William, a guy who works for the same company as I, and who also lives in Iizuka, scored me a free ticket. This was my first pro soccer game experience, and I really had a good time. I can't say I noticed a great deal of differences between this game and soccer games that are played in the states or in Europe, other than the fans were all Japanese, as was most of the food. I ate a juicy sausage link on a stick.

Its been really great being able to visit Fukuoka city on the weekends. From Iizuka, a train ride to Fukuoka city takes about 45 minutes and costs about 6 dollars. Fukuoka city is the biggest city in Fukuoka prefecture and I think has around 1 million and a half people. It reminds me of Portland, OR, in a lot of ways; the city is located right on the water, its has a sort of cosmopolitan feel to it (for Japan anyway - in Fukuoka city there are a lot of foreigners living amongst the Japanese), and there is a lot to do culturally. A few weekends ago I visited Tenjin, the older, more central part of Fukuoka city. It's difficult to tell much about how old things are in Tenjin, though, or anywhere in Fukuoka city really, because most of the buildings look so new.

When I was in Tenjin there was a music festival going on and several stages were set up within a few blocks to showcase bands from Kyushu and around Japan. I caught one bigger show in front of the city hall, and there were several other groups playing well within walking distance from there. It was a free show, and went on for two days. William and I were able to catch the tail end of a Japanese "Ventures" cover band performance. This group of mostly older Japanese men played some fantastic surf-rock to a small, older crowd of Japanese people. I really loved what I saw.

Its been nice for me to be able to visit Fukuoka City and Tenjin and get a change of scenery from Iizuka. The night life is big, the food is great, the people dress stylish and funny, and it's pretty easy to get around. The pictures I'm posting are of: me at the soccer game, a nighttime shot from a bridge in Fukuoka city, a shot of people walking around Nakasu, the big entertainment district in Fukuoka city, and a clip of some Japanese guys rockin' out in tribute to the Ventures.

Two Weeks at Shonai

These past two weeks have been the best and worst of times for me as an English teacher in Japan. I've been working at Shonai Chuu Gakko, a junior high school on the outskirts of Iizuka. Shonai is a small country suburb of Iizuka, surrounded by some rice farms and countryside. It's about a 25 minute bike ride from my place in Iizuka.

During my first two days at Shonai the rain fell pretty heavily. On my first day I actually fell off my bike on the way to school because raindrops covered my glasses and blocked my vision. After crossing a crosswalk on an expressway, I sideswiped a pole on the sidewalk. I fell off the side of my bike to the ground and a Japanese civil service worker picked up my backpack wrapped in a plastic bag and handed it to me. I'm sure it was a sight for those drivers that Monday morning to see me wearing my all grey rainsuit and shiny black rubber boots eat it on the sidewalk with my shiny red bike. Overall, no substantial damage happened to the bike, and I was just fine. It really was a trek getting to and from Shonai everyday (especially with the hills), but for the first two days it felt like a mission.

I noticed some stark differences between the ichi-nensei (7th grade), ni-nensei (8th grade), and san-nensei (9th grade) students at Shonai. During my first day, the ichi-nensei students were eager to ask me questions in English and partipate in the lesson. In general, I couldn't have asked for better students; I've never seen such an outgoing, friendly group of kids at junior high school here so far. One class loved to sing, and they sang "Country Road" by John Denver with pretty good voices! The teacher for the ichi-nensei students I felt had a good command of the students attention, and she was very conscious of trying to help the students improve their pronounciation and intonation (like saying the word 'student' instead of 'student-o' and learning how to raise their voices slightly at the end of a sentence when they asked a question).

The ni-nensei and san-nensei classrooms had a very different dynamic, and most of the time a different English teacher. I really had some difficulty working with this English teacher. It really surprised me how poor her English speaking ability was. Often times when she would try to help the students form a sentence in English all the grammar would be mixed up. The students didn't know any better, so numerous times when I was with her she was teaching them really poor English. Also, I felt like she could have had a better command of the students' attention. At times I felt like my place in the classroom was nothing more than a mouthpiece for her lesson. During one class period, she pointed to the textbook and said to me, "These sentences, repeat after students," which meant "Can you please read these sentences and have the students repeat them after you?" I looked at the students and noticed half of them were talking while the other half were listening. I asked her, "Now?" and she said, "Yes." So, I ended up reading sentences to a classroom of students of which only half of them were paying attention. This happened to me a few times while I was at Shonai.

The two English teachers I worked with at Shonai received treatment from the students they didn't deserve. They are working within a school system that allows them little room to take any sort of disciplinary action towards the students. I don't know the half of it, but I know it made me sad to see a student take the teacher's textbook, watch the teacher get angry and throw it at the wall in frustration, and then sit laughing while a third of the students laughed as well or sat smiling.

Yet while there things that really irked me about some of the students at Shonai, I also noticed something really genuine and honest about them. They had a self-confidence and forthrightness that I didn't see that often from students at Ichuu or Nichuu. At Ichuu and Nichuu, most of my interactions with the students were marked by nervous giggles among the girls and shy greetings among the boys. At Shonai, I felt like I was getting to know the students at a deeper level.

In order the pictures are of: Shonai Chuu Gakko, the countryside surrounding Shonai the morning after 2 days of heavy rain, a freshly harvested [rice] farm near Shonai.

Playing Basketball at Ni-Chuu

Ni-Chuu is the nickname of my second school. Its full name is Iizuka Dai-Ni Chuu Gakko. Chuu Gakko means "junior high school" in Japanese. While working at Ni-Chuu, I decided I wanted to play basketball with the school's basketball club. I had played one time with the basketball club at I-Chuu (Iizuka Dai-ichi Chuu Gakko), the first school I began work at, and I wanted to try out some hoops with the Ni-Chuu kids. I asked the English teacher if I could play with the team, and he said "Of course, let me ask the supervisor and I will be back." After coming back from the gym, he told me he would take me back to the gym so I could meet the club members. As I walked through the gym doors, I saw a group of seven junior-high age girls in basketball clothes walking up to meet me. They all circled around me and gave me these nice, big, simultaneous bows, and then I stood there feeling confused as to what I should do next.

The fact is that Ni-Chuu doesn't have enough coaching support for a boys basketball team, so, in my case, I could either choose to hoop it up with these girls or politely say no. I decided do have practice with them, thinking I could just join in on their drills or games and play some easy ball after a days teaching. It pretty much worked out this way during my first practice with them, so I felt pretty good about saying I would come back to play with them again. Well, the next time I played with them, the supervisor happened to be at an important baseball game for the local pro team around here, the Softbank Hawks. I walked into the gym again, and the girls gave me their usual greeting of respect of bowing, and I stood there again feeling awkward. "Nani-o shimasu ka?" one of the girls asked me...(What are we going to do?) "Lets play basketball," I said, really hoping they would just go into their normal routine like the last time. In fact, they started to do one of their usual drills, but during this I realized that they should have been doing some better warm-up drills, liking working on lay-ups. So, I taught them a new lay-up drill, and also showed them how to work on their reverse lay-ups. After this, I taught them other drills, thinking they would really be helpful for them when it came time to scrimmage. I ended up leading these girls through a 2 hour basketball practice.

I felt some stress during this practice because I knew I could teach them some great new things (not to mention some of their shooting forms were pretty shabby looking), but I also knew that they had a supervisor, and I didn't know much about his openness to me teaching these girls new things. I did know that some of the English teachers I'd been working with acted conservatively in the classroom, and were very "by the book" in the way they taught the class. Allowing creativity to flourish definetely is not a high priority in their classrooms. I'd say this is a trait that is more or less general to all of the English classes I've seen so far (for example, I know at least four English teachers from two different schools who have taught students ranging from ichi nensei, or 7th graders, to san-nensei, 9th graders, to answer the question "How are you?" with nothing but "I'm fine, thank you. And you?") - but it really does depends on the teacher. I think its also relevant that I am living in a semi-rural area as well - so maybe classes are taught differently in the heart of Tokyo?

Anyway, I hadn't worked with the basketball supervisor, Hano-sensei, and so when he came back the next day, I asked him if it was ok that I was teaching the girls new things (my Japanese at this point amounted to me pointing at what the girls were doing and asking - is this ok?)... He understood my question, and said back to me in Japanese "Its ok, please help me..." This really was quite a relief for me - but I have to admit I still felt a little funny teaching these girls how to bust a spin move on the court the next day.

I'll be back to that school in another 8 weeks, and I think I'll be leading some more practices at that time...