Ryan Cecil Smith

I spent my afternoon at Naruo studying Japanese and drawing gardens. I made a delicious avocado tomato sandwich, sadly not pictured.

I went to MASH, the US military surplus store in Osaka. It’s a huge store with clothes, gear, helmets, patches, boots, and guns (just kidding, I think). It’s a 10 minute walk from Namba station in a neighborhood of warehouses. I need to replace my G1 Jacket’s cuffs and waistband which have been slowly eviscerated to shreds.

Then me and Sayaka went to Namba Bears, where we saw N,SHUKUGAWA BOYS (N,夙川ＢＯＹｓ) an awesome retro rock band that I can’t do justice with my words. Throwbacks to the Pixies and more British and American rock bands. I felt like I was in a movie. Really this is the best band I’ve ever seen at Bears. I wish I spoke Japanese so I could talk to them! Here’s a YouTube video

After several cans of delicious Chu-hi and disgusting whiskey Highball, Sayaka and I dragged ourselves to Bodeju, my favorite okonomiyake joint. It’s relaxed, full of ojisans and partying kids alike, and the staff are great. They’re not too friendly but they’re nice, and are total masters of their craft. Next time I go I’m going to take a video of the guy slicing, spinning, tossing and dressing my perfect okonomiyake.

The 1st year students at my visit school had to write about Japanese superstitions for their final assignment. Here are some of the most interesting papers, and some of the not-very-good papers. Grammar and spelling errors have been retained except where the automatic spell-check corrected me.

A fool doesn’t catch a cold

It means both good and bad luck from a diffrent point of view. Good luck is “doesn’t catch a cold.” Bad luck is “A FOOL.” So A FOOL is lucky, who doesn’t catch a cold. And DOESN’T CATCH A COLD is unlucky, who is A FOOL. “ I’m in panic!! But the superstition is never true. Because everyone have been caught a cold. So it is used when everyone makes fun of each other. I think it is used all over Japan and its funny superstition!

Cats draw rain

I think that many Japanese know this superstition. “If cats wash their faces, there will be rain.” For what reason? The persistence of dry weather causes a low humidity. And it dries cats’ eyes and nose. So they wash their faces to moisten those. In brief, a rainy day will come when fine weather go on for days on end.

I don’t believe this superstition. Because we can know the weather outlook for tomorrow and next week by weather forecast. I think that many old people believe this superstition. They had the way to know the weather report for tomorrow by signs of nature. It is awesome! We should imitate their lives. Then we can live a flexible life.

hiccup

Getting hiccups 100 times, it means death. It is believed by many Japanese. Probably, anyone couldn’t get rid of one’s hiccups and was fear of it. So, this superstition maybe made up. When I was young, I believed it. But I don’t believe now. Because I understand that hiccups don’t damage for us!

Before going out, you must NOT cut your NAILS

To be honest,.. I’ve heard this from my mother TODAY and it was my FIRST TIME to hear this superstition. I’m worried about this thing. Since I know this one, ‘Don’t Cut your Nails at Night’; It’s because in the old times, there was no bright light at night and people cut their finger in accident. For another reason, there wasn’t high-developed medical technologies. I heard some of them were killed just because they got by failing cutting their nails!! — So many confused with this, or maybe not…

Anyway, there ARE reasons for this. When you going out, you’re really hurring and maybe excited. So, it will be dangerous to do so much a tiny delicate thing at time like that, it’s said.

Now, ending this report, I have another worry. Can you say this’s superstition?

Nails and socks

When I cut my nails, my parents often say, “You had better not cut your nails at night.” I wonder why I had better not do so, then I asked them. Tney answered, “It is said that cutting nails at night prevents us from seeing our parents on their deathbed.” Later I searched about this story. I found another story like this. It says, “If you sleep with your socks on, you cannot see your parents on their deathbed.” I had known the former, but I didn’t know the latter. Though I searched more, I couldn’t find clear ground of them.

A tea stem float upright

In Japan, they have said what a tea stem float upright means auspicious for long time. I research why such superstition exist.

First, because it doesn’t happen very often, it’s rare and happy. NExt, old people thought pillars are auspicious because they are important to support house and their figures towering into the sky are felt rigor. For that reason, tea stems are felt lucky too.

By the way, they say the thing originates from Suruga. Suruga is Shizuoka in our time. Suruga’s merchants selling tea leaves trouble not to sell a lot of tea leaves gathered second. That tea leaves have not only leaf but also stem. So they spread the superstition. That is why they are sold well.

Then, how should we do, if we find it in our tea? There are various opinions. For example, drinking it before others notice it, talking others the thing to share the good luck and so on.

It doesn’t have grounds, but I’m believeing because I become happy when find it.

colors

In Japan, it is said that yellow things catch money more. Because yellow collor is near the color of golds. For example, a yellow wallet is very good. But I don’t believe this superstition. Because I don’t think that yellow is gold.

The thunder

If it is thundering, you must hide your navel. If you don’t do it, you will have horrible experience. It is that an ogre steal your navel. I think many people were worried about children’s health. So many children have a stomachache in bad weather day.

Animism

Although foreign people believe tha God is one. Example Yahweh, Allah. But Japanese people believe that many things around us is god.

This difference is taken place by religion. Today, I will write Japanese god. Japanese people beliebe that there is a god in sushi called inari. That god is fox. The reason lies in color. Inari’s color is the same fox.

If we eat inari, fox keep us being helthy. Therefore we have believed it for a long time. It is called “Animism” in Japan. Thankyou.

Black number

Black number is a black number plate. If we see it there, it happen good thing. bUt a green plate, such as a taxi mustn’t see it between that. If you see green plate, you should do gain from the beginning. This is very difficult.

Graduation starts off slow but becomes greater. Huge plastic sheets have been rolled onto the gym floor from wall to wall. It’s pretty crowded inside. There are lots of parents and some are dressed very well, including some in kimonos. The ceremony is boring with lots of standing and bowing and calling out of names,but unlike most events, everyone is very well behaved and sits down and stands up in unison. One of my favorite 2nd-year students gives a speech, and she gives the best super-bow I’ve ever seen.

The best part of the ceremony is when the 3rd year students are dismissed. In America this is a sloppy mess. We throw our hats up in the air. It feels picturesque, but it’s not so meaningful. Here, it’s great, like the most emotional part of the most emotional movie, repeated 7 times. The classes are called to stand up one by one, as the music swells, and they all hold hands and bow to their teachers and cheer, “arigato gozaimasu!” Then they turn to their parents and do it again. Then they all walk down the isle in center of the room to the back entrance with everyone applauding. The teachers and ALT’s stand along the back entrance, and we can see some of the students crying! Some of us are crying a little bit, too. All 7 classes do this and it’s really beautiful.

After the ceremony, the 3rd year students return to their classrooms to receive their certificates. Having it take place in the classroom is very personal, since Japanese students spent the whole year or longer with each other. Later, everyone is hanging out outside, talking in big groups with their clubs, giving gifts to the members who are leaving, and taking pictures.

Andy, my predecessor, came to watch the ceremony. We took pictures with students afterwards. He was like a celebrity! He walked into a classroom, one girl yelled “Andy!” and the entire class flocked around him with cameras outstretched. Freaky! Tom Cruise style!

Last night I was up until 2:30, mostly editing pieces in and out of the previous 20 pages of this story, and then formatting the most recent 5. It was tedious and horrible because it’s hard enough to edit details into your unfinished pages of an unfinished story, without you slow computer that takes minutes to open a file. The scanner takes more minutes to start up, and then I use it for 1 minute to scan a 10-square-centimeter chunk of dialogue.

However, at the end of the night, I saved the pages into spreads so I could “really” see how they look, and it feels good. Quite rewarding! Unfinished but not abysmal. Today I’m penciling and inking 4 more pages. There’s no class, so I’m spending all day in the tatami-mat room and getting stuff done..

The deadline looms, over and out.

Kame-san, or “Mr. Turtle,” is our cute friend in the pond at Naruo Koko. He is delightful. He knows how to enjoy life. He lays out in the sun, he swims, and he comes by to see you when you walk by (he’s hoping for some turtle treats). In the winter, he disappears, but today HE IS BACK!

Jackie and I asked ourselves, where does he go?? He couldn’t hide underwater. Does he live in the bushes? Wouldn’t an animal eat him? Then again, there aren’t many animals around here. Hmmm.

So we googled and found the answer:

Most water turtles go deep into the pond and snuggle down into some mud and leaves at the bottom. Then they let themselves get cold. Their bodies slow down so they don’t need to eat anymore. Their hearts slow down too so that they beat only once every few minutes. They stop breathing through their lungs. Because their bodies are running at such a slow speed, they don’t need much oxygen, but they do need some. They can get the small amount of oxygen they need from the water. It sinks in through some specialized skin cells that are just inside the tail opening. That’s right! They “breathe” through their tails! Water turtles can stay like this for two or three months.

Eww!! Whoa!!!! I think of Kame-san as very friendly, in a personified way, at least as friendly as a mammal, but he is NOT HUMAN. This is weird. Well, I guess turtles are not people, and they can in fact sleep underwater for months at a time. This is so freaky. Well, welcome back to the mammal world, Mr. Turtle! We’re glad to see you again!

I love reading JET blogs. They’re especially good when there’s lots of complaining.

An ALT in Osaka wrote this great post about why her job basically sucks, which you should read if you are applying to the JET program. She doesn’t usually complain on her blog, but it sounds like the situation at her workplace is really bad.

I have a much better situation. I’m lucky. I want to write about some similar complaints, especially about “the system,” but I would like to describe my situation, in mostly neutral or positive terms, first.

I get self-conscious when I post about JET. Am I a typical JET? Will my coworkers read this? Am I just complaining? I hope people – especially potential JET applicants – read this and get an idea of how JET sometimes works.

What I do

The work itself is mostly pretty fun. Fortunately, I’m usually not too busy. I work at two schools with mostly good students. I’m in the classroom about 3 hours a day. Between two schools, I teach five kinds of classes and repeat their lessons several times, so there’s not too much planning by the end of a semester. Usually I plan a lesson mostly by myself, I work with a JTE to figure out if the plan is any good, and I refine it as I repeat it. I love it when it goes well. The first day I teach a class, the students are “guinea pigs,” and it can be an emotional day for me if the lesson goes bad. However, the lesson will usually get better and better with time. If I play my cards right, I will do a lot of planning for 3 weeks, and then the next 6 weeks will be all repetition, and I can mostly relax during my free time.

I don’t do very much marking. I dislike marking (in the US we call it “grading papers”). Of course I will happily do it, if asked, but somehow I have managed to avoid it thus far and I hope my cheerful attitude does not inadvertently invite more marking.

I don’t have a club. There is an ESS at my school, but the students kind of never show up. Some ALT’s like to do baseball or Japanese arts with the students, I guess? I wouldn’t really like to do that. It’s too much of a commitment. And I would feel weird just “showing up” after being at school for a year. The only club I am interested in is the tea club. Maybe I will join that in the future. Yeah… hmm…

Free Time

I have a lot of free time at work and I use it shamelessly to pursue my own hobbies/alternative career path, so I’m seldom bored. When I am bored, there is Facebook. Some of my friends look at Facebook all day, which I think is terrible, and which is why I recommend bringing a hobby to work. I often bring out an A3 piece of paper and a ruler and pencils and ink and a brush, and draw comics at my desk. Some teachers will comment quizzically, or positively, but no one has suggested I not do that.

Jackie (my coworker) and I used to feel weird about sitting at our desks, not doing work, when everyone around seems rather busy. However, now that we have a sense of how things work, and teachers’ attitudes, we don’t worry about it too much. We are somewhat discreet: we don’t watch full-screen movies on our computers, but occasionally we will watch the latest episode of LOST. We do not do this between classes or at lunch, when a lot of people are running around.

My attitude is to accept the fact that we are not as busy as the rest of the teachers, and to take advantage of that without rubbing it in everyone’s noses. I am aware that other teachers know I’m not so busy, but they don’t give me a hard time about it. Unless I’m friends with a teacher, I just don’t bring it up. I think it is very common in Japan to “try and look busy,” but I don’t like doing this and I think JET’s shouldn’t feel pressured to conform to that silly custom. Just be polite about it.

Teachers

I work with all kinds of teachers and I love the diversity. I teach with old teachers, young teachers, cool teachers, square teachers. I have better relationships with some than others. The best situation is when we respect each other, have patience for each other, and communicate well with each other. The worst situation is when we don’t respect each other and we don’t/can’t communicate. Some of them I never chat with, outside of class and brief lesson planning, but I get along with most of my teachers, and we can make small-talk about anything, anytime. I would only call one or two of them my “friends.”

At my home school, everyone in the office is very friendly, even the ones who are shy. They say “ohayo gozaimasu” and often smile. It is a nice atmosphere and I feel generally welcome. I don’t speak Japanese with them, and many of them cannot speak English, but that’s okay. Sometimes I make stupid small talk in Japanese, and I feel retarded, but they do the same thing.

At my visit school, many teachers do not say hello to me. They are busy and not too friendly. They make me feel weird. When I make an effort to reach out to them, this situation often improves. That’s great. But for some teachers — even English teachers!!! — it hasn’t improved, so I strongly dislike the atmosphere there. I frequently wonder if I am doing something wrong. ESID = Every Situation is Different.

Students

I really love my students. It’s great figuring out who likes English, and seeing them get really really good at it over the years. I’ve been here two years and have been really surprised by everyone’s progression but definitely there are a few at each school who outshine the rest. It’s really fun having conversation with them at lunch or after school. I know a lot of students by name – mostly the ones in the English course in Nishinomiya – but among the rest there are a lot that I just say hi to between classes a lot. I really like walking around between classes or after school when they’re doing their clubs and talking to them as they warmup. This isn’t “important,” but it’s “important.” I mean, I shouldn’t get paid to just walk around and chat with students; but, if I’m going to get paid, I really ought to walk around and give students opportunities to use English with a native speaker.

Bad things

If someone asked me, “what is the worst part about being an ALT in the JET Program,” what would I say? I think “culture fatigue” generally is the worst pain in the ass. It comes in cycles and really wears me down. Not speaking Japanese really sucks sometimes. Another bad thing that every ALT finds issues with is the Japanese education system as a whole. I want to write and complain about this. I’ll write about it in a future post. I’ll try not to “bitch.” “Constructive criticism.” Coming soon.

What an interesting day on my bicycle, with a camera.

First I met this guy with the same bike as me, only he has changed his handlebars and some other parts. I will soon change my handlebars and get a tube pad and make it look exactly like this guy’s great bike. How is his seat so clean?? I don’t know how to clean my leather seat.

This stencil is of interest to people who like bikes, and people who like stencils. It’s also so strange that there are 6 guys doing this job. This is typical in Japan. It’s insane how many construction guys are hired to do simple jobs on the street. I wonder if it’s more efficient when they’re on a site, and they don’t need 4 old guys to direct traffic in every direction?

These baseball players have cute helmets and cool sheaths for their bats. They travel in packs.

From where I sit in my tatami room, if I turn my head to the left, I can see out my 10th-floor window, beyond my balcony, through the space beneath the guard rail, across the long parking lot to a construction site of which just a sliver is visible, where the colorful equipment, such as yellow ropes, green ladders, orange and blue cones, and white tarps, are stacked into adjacent piles. I’m drawing toys, and they look like toys, and it’s a weird doubling effect of the real world and the world on paper, strangely 3-dimensional.

I was surprised to read this comment thread on Facebook:

• I think things were better in Japan when I didn’t understand what people around me were saying. Ahhhh, good ol’ blissful ignorance. Those days are long gone.
  • yeah…japan sucks wen u can understand wots going on
  • ignorance is bliss
  • especially when u know there is little u can do to change. I am done with teaching here. I am seriouslly hoping I have failed the interview earlier

I know that at least one of those people is really good at Japanese, AND teaches at a high-level school. Man, is it really that bad for them? I have only recently begun studying Japanese regularly (yes, I know, that’s lame), so I added:

• i want to learn japanese but i don’t want anyone at school to know about it

To which the original poster replied:

• That’s the best way to do it, Ryan! I knew of one ALT who had to translate stuff from his city’s city hall due to his Japanese ability. The more abilities and work ethic you have, the more you will be used to death. Whereas the useless lazy ALT will find himself/herself with a nice 1,2 or 3 year paid holiday. In terms of Japanese ability, it is best to follow the ol’ Japanese way of keeping everything hidden.

I am going to continue studying, but I will conceal it. (and for the record, neither of us are entirely useless and lazy!) The reason I feel that way is because I like the distance from the language barrier between myself and my coworkers. At my job, I’m happy that I get to contribute a lot, but I don’t want to get sucked into Japanese work culture, in which everyone is too polite and never complains and works too hard. I also don’t want to get sucked into awkward conversations with some of my crazy coworkers. And of course, for now, it’s very embarrassing when I speak such totally bad Japanese! Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future, but for now I’ll continue to study and I will keep quiet about it.

I follow Chris Butcher’s blog, where is has lately been posting photos from his travels all over Japan. They are mostly things that occur in my daily life, so I will try to fit a few more similar things onto the net. If you come to Japan, please find these things and try them yourself!

My most recent favorite snack is strawberry-flavored Caramel Corn. These are light sweet puffs that melt in your mouth. There are more flavors but I never take the opportunity to try them when strawberry is on the shelf. Only 100 yen!!

Usually I love to buy Osatsu. Osatsu are a winter-season chip that taste like sugary sweet potato. In the summer I rarely find this treat but if I do, I’ll buy five. There is a maple flavor available, but it is disgusting. Only 100 yen!!

These are little more expensive: Jagabee fake french fries. They are like artificial french fries that taste like the best french fries you’ve ever had. The consistency is different: crispier and denser than a real potato wedge. You won’t believe how good it is until you’ve tried it. One cup is only 130 yen!!! A box is like 500 yen.