done

Well. Well. This is the last hour here at school. Not a whole lot to say really. Been crying like a girl for three days now. Have received more love letters in three days than Gareth Gates does in a year. Bunches of flowers, home made ornaments, marriage proposals, pictures, picture frames to put them in, phone straps, sweets, hugs and more. It's been a little overwhelming. As much as I didn't work here this year I certainly have gotten to know the students as best I could, and my fellow teachers (Except Cunt-Sensei who is an absolute cunt). Familiarity and routine have certainly dug in and built up any emotional attachment I have to the recently earthquake-proofed walls of the school. There are so many things and people I could talk about concerning these years’ endeavors. Japanese education is just bewildering. It's so bad in so many ways it's beyond a joke. Pressure is immense on students to gain access to top universities, even a regular university for that matter, ' day weeks and 12 hour days are normal. Forced to join a club they have no interest in. For the most disciplined students every night and every weekend is spent at juku (grind school) having their little heads filled with exam-passing information. It’s all learned by rote, not deduction. If you ever ask a Japanese student to use initiative you get a startled look and a ten-minute panic of uhms and aw's while they try and figure out how to express themselves. They don't even write essays in Japanese class. Imagination is suffocated from very early on, it’s a wonder they haven’t all gone mad. There is no doubt that the Japanese are united in a consensus that education is essential for social cohesion, economic prosperity and prestige in international affairs. But unfortunately, like I said, form and rote take precedence over function and knowledge. The students aren't taught to analyze but rather only 'essential' information needed to pass the exams for their entry onto the next educational stage. And there are exams for primary school, junior high and senior high. And then the exams for university, the whole point of life up to this point. Schools also act as a discipline factory and hammer down the nails that stick out. From the first days of schooling the educational system focuses on developing such basic Japanese values as harmonious relations with others and establishing group identity through membership in a limited number of social and vocational groups. It's their way of life. I could go on only I'm not articulate enough nor bothered enough to ramble on about points that everyone already knows, and I've got a party to attend which is full of horny teenage girls. I actually think I may be in love with one of the students. Easily the best looking person I’ve ever seen. During the course of tapping away at this drivvle she brought me a photo of herself and a letter looking to rendezvous in Tokyo. 17 is okay, isn't it? Well, I'll just wait till she graduates. Eh...moving swiftly along. Lat post as a JET. I'm sure I'll flick one up here before the next stage of the search for the Golden Toffees, they7re out there somewhere. I know it. I won't give up. A year of contrasts, much like Japan is a country of contrasts. Charged with the duty of internationalisation I7ve never had problems with the Japanese, it’s been the internationalisers that have poses the greatest headache. I've gonna on about them before, no need to rehash now.
The Jet year, teaching wise is over.

Nothing more to say really.

What's in a day?

The end is drawing ever nearer, the curtains about to be pulled over or at least over here the paper screen will soon slide over for the last time.

My successor has inundated me with questions about life, snakes, cheese and more. His vitality reminds me of my excitement as I prepared to become part of the JET set. He just sent me a mail asking me what my daily routine is like here in the Nohe. I didn't know how to answer that question. If I'm totally honest he'll probably resign from his new post before boarding the flight to Tokyo, then again if I'm not he may wonder why I held things back from him about life in the Nohe. My final draft was a little from column A and a little from column B. I also realised that I've never told any of you back home what I actually do at work, or what my daily routine is. So, here you have it. A day in the life of RunningMan Sensei.

4a.m. and the sun raids my bedroom like NARCs in a crack-house. Immediately I wake and curse the lack of daylight savings time while trying to wipe the layers of sweat from my sexy body. Three hours of uneasiness follow with the humidity growing in intensity alongside the sun reaching an optimum angle at which to attack me from.

7 bells is greeted by a Japanese love-song-cum-alarm-call and the local tannoy announcing the days weather and traffic report, “it will be incredibly hot, sticky, rain for 2hours (torrentially) and there will be 4 cars on the road, PLEASE BE CAREFUL”. Everything in Japan conspires against a good nights sleep. I take note of her warning and am partially alive at 0730, when she repeats it. I now find that there's nothing like a bowl of rice in the morning to get you on your way. Throw in an apple pie and a yoghurt and nothing can get in the way of full contact internationalisation. A gentle dab of wax in my hair, more for the ladies than for me, and a quick mental reminder that I am the man and it's off to ‘work’ having had 18mins 42secs of sleep.

22ft from the house and I'm caked in a new film of sweat. The humidity is like a New Delhi street urchin, it just won’t leave you alone. I Indiana Jones my way through the thousands of spider webs cast from branch to branch invariably getting caught in about 47 of them every morning. These days I have to watch my step for the morning rush hour of tennis ball sized albino snails drooling across the path. Occasionally, a crow the size of a small dog will swoop to a fence post and death stare me as I walk on by. At least two times per week at the end of the wood's there's a retiree taking a piss with a seemingly never ending cigarette wilting away in his mouth. He doesn’t say hello.

With the leafy cover behind me the sun starts to remind me that it’s not just my sleep it intends on ruining. My first encounters with routine work-goers are in three categories type 1 greets me with a friendly herrrro, type 2 overts their eyes any where possible, switches to the opposite side of the path and raises a shoulder in a defensive position in case I might want to beat the shit out of him and type 3 looks at you as if they are laying eyes on E.T. in a business suit ( I usually stare type 3 right in the eye to make them feel like they should convert to being type 2). The park looms fifty feet below on my right with swarms of 140-somethings out playing petanque. Petanque being the only sport/activity that these right-angled great-grannies are suited to playing other than sitting.

It’s at this point where the students and I cross paths. The usual exchange being “good morning Lunning Man Sensei” and I follow up with a good morning how are you type thing and usually the group, in unison, will rattle off ‘I am fine thank you’, giggle then run. The girls just giggle; in fact I think giggling is a form of communication amongst female kind over here. I walk past and then hear the kawaii’s (cute) accompanied by the giggling, it’s a little different from passing Dublin schoolgirls who’d probably flick a cigarette butt at you, call you a faggot, threaten to kick lumps out of you and steal your wallet. The traffic warden makes a point of stopping whatever he’s doing to come shake my hands. As there is no traffic to protect people against its okay that he stops whatever it is he is doing. The final assault on the school is a 20% incline for about 400m just to ensure that I’ve sweat out at least 4litres before I start ‘work’.

I arrive at ‘work’ sweating like a rapist, red-faced and wheezing. Fitness has taken a back seat of late. The brass band is in full swing having being practicing since sunrise, as have most of the other clubs. When arriving at a Japanese office the protocol is to make sure everyone is aware of your arrival by giving one loud ‘good morning’ and 62 follow-ups before sitting down. We have two morning meetings, both of which I have no clue what’s being said. Then I usually find that my two scheduled classes for the day, that’s a total of 80mins work, have either been cancelled, timetabled together or they have an important test that must be taken today in order for them to gain access to university because if they don’t get to university their lives are essentially ruined and over and done with and they can only stick to menial tasks, well at least that’s’ what they’re told at my school. It used to really irritate me but in the past couple of months I’ve just grown used to it and accepted it. So usually I now log on to gmail and start chatting with whomever, well mostly FlirtyShoulders, for a solid 8hours. I’ll scan over the news and read as much about North Korea as I can find (one day, one day I’ll make it there).

If I am fortunate enough to have a class to attend I’ll be a human tape recorder for the second years. “Repeat after me” or “Listen carefully to Question 1, 2, 3 etc” is possibly the worst thing you can imagine doing, ever. Even worse than living in an American suburb. My first-year classes are a little more exciting where I get to follow the course book to the letter and occasionally play a game of my choosing. My school is incredibly academic and students are subjected to an inordinate amount of testing. Before every class they have a short test for ten minutes which basically involves them learning obsolete English phrases such as ‘to err is human, to forgive divine’, they’ll come in real handy on the streets of NYC when they’re lost in the Bronx and asking some homie the way to the nearest ATM machine.

The day passes at varying a varying pace depending on the standard of conversation going on on gmail. Of course there are the usual brushes with students and teaching staff, mostly though they, i.e. everybody, is too busy to notice if I was barebacked and covered in swastikas. The one thing that has saved me from sitting at a desk with a chopstick up each nostril and then head-butting the desk has been kyudo. For those ignorant in the ways of the samurai, I am now training to be a killer. Most probably I’ll be deployed by the Emperors special secret ninja guard team on worldwide missions of national importance seducing women, occasionally men, and fighting anti-Nippon guerillas charged by powerful world leaders and CEO’s of global steel and oil companies. the kyudo team have been my best source of street-level Japanese. They are all having sex, lots of sex, and mostly with the kids from the local technical school which is full of j-gangstas, or at least the laughable attempts of gansgtas that they are. Word.

Training lasts for about 2 hours after which my hand is so limp that I can’t even contemplate showering Blankie with love for at least three hours. Weekdays are mixed between DVD’s, futsal, hanging out with RuralSlut and more DVD’s. Yes, they are that exciting. There is not even a coffee shop in the fair ‘city’ I live in. People don’t walk the streets and all the shops are empty, I have no idea what they are doing. There is one ALT who has students round to its house on a regular basis but to me that’s just wrong wrong wrong. Would I, would anybody, in a teaching position, have students round after hours for video games and cooking? I’m not saying anything below-the-belt is happening but it does send out certain messages to students about foreigners, teacher relationships and the attitudes of some JETs, albeit well meaning, but misplaced egos and distorted views and opinions on Japaneses society and culture. Anyway, it’s just something I think about a lot. Japan is not a third world country, it does not need help from outsiders. Sure, it needs a Sumo size kick up the ass in regards to its attitudes and relationships with westerners but they can only themselves instigate the change, should they want to that is.

So the day ends after a meal of epic proportions. I have taken haute cuisine to new levels this year, all without an oven. Rice as a staple has been prominent throughout and kimchi has been welcomed into my life with open arms, and a semi. I’ve given up on Haruki Murakami after he failed to live up to the potential of A Wild Sheep Chase in his latter and earlier offerings, although I haven’t read Norwegian Wood yet. Japanese history is what sends me to sleep before it all starts again.

Working to live or living to work, well neither applies to me as I do neither. You can see that the walk to school is where the day peaks before troughing at ‘work’ and peaking again, momentarily, before troughing again. Up, down, up down. It’s all been about the weekends over here. That’s about 100days in all, mostly all good with tales of debauchery that have been shared and tales of another kind, such as last weekends cliffside adventure and perverted Japanese day-trippers with zoom lenses, that have been locked behind closed blogs. All in all days have gone by. One after another, days have gone by.

Saving Nepal, single handedly

The thought of children not having the opportunity to receive an education in a bricks and mortar venue inspired this post. Word of a fundraising quiz had filtered its way into my inbox, I duly obliged.

Apart from helping the poor, unfortunate and badly dressed children of Nepal it was a chance to run a sociological survey, of sorts, over the inmates of neighbouring wards, oh and get hammered.

The weekend kicked off on Friday evening with T, TheCorpse and TheImmigrant making the trek to the Nohe although it was almost Saturday morning after T's sense of direction almost led him to downtown Okinawa. BrassBalls joined us, too. The plan was to nomihodai our faces off and then back to mine for the World Cup quarter-final. The retards arrived so late we had no choice but to shove two hours worth of nomihodai into just under an hour. We gave it our best shot. I spray puked the bathroom. TheImmigrant dithered over every drink. We were on a full tank of hops and sugar when we reached the Pool Bar, last time I was there I had bawled my eyes out and crawled out at 7 in the morning shunning the advances of SluttyWaitress. As we walked in I got a nice 'Hey, RunningMan'(makin your way in the world today sure does take a lot, taking away from all your worries sure would help a lot, wouldn't you like to get away...sometimes you gotta go where everyboooody knows your naaaaaame, and they’re always glad you caaaame. I miss cheers) from GlassEyedBarman and a cheeky smile from SluttyWaitress. We set about watching the game with TheCorpse immediately passing out. We turned around at one point to catch two of the barfly's group groping SluttyWaitress's breasts; BrassBalls was deeply disappointed at having missed out on it. The match ended but the group had well fizzled out long before and we set about returning back to sleep with Blankie.

After picking up PrivateScouser from the shink station we set about taking the longest way possible to the quiz venue by Lake Towada, Aomori prefecture. I was eager to get there as quickly as possible so I could help the Nepalese kids. The hotel smelled of incontinent grannies, but if I was helping the Nepalese children it didn't matter where I'd be resting my head. We teamed up with the rest of the RedSocks: TheFlamingTits, BlondeAndBlue, CongenialScot and TheCunningLinguist. CongenialScot was looking a tad like TheImmigrant sporting a bling Jesus round his neck, TheImmigrant was understandably jealous of the $5 accessory CongenialScot had been given by a student. Dinner was relatively edible, in the sense that I now take 10% as being a good figure of what I can eat on a Japanese plate. I met a few familiar faces and one in particular who I'd been waiting to meet for a while; BeligerentCountryman. I hadn't seen him since the beaches of Thailand where we were high, as kites, on life (sit down there O'Brien) and listening to JohnnyAwesome teach us all about his favourite land, sea and air animals.

BeligerentCountryman had similar stories of Tokyo, and beyond, to share and an even more vented opinion on JET life than I did, nice and refreshing. Post-dinner we volunteered for the traditional dance that was organised. We got kitted out in the usual attire and made our way to the lobby for the performance. I spotted a wheelchair, which I took and sat in. We walked out hand in hand; well I was wheeled out, for the gathered mass. The non-PC tone of my act was evident in the faces of many, others laughed but everyone realised I was there to help save the children of Nepal so it was all good. I wiggled on wheels to the taiko beats being doled out by the 4year old drummer boy.

In any quiz I've been at I've found that having a Japanese person or a Japan-freak is a marked advantage, e.g. WeirdestManOnThePlanetAndNotInAGoodWayOhMyGodHeIsSuchAFreak
IAmScaredAtHis PotentialToSpawnAndKeepHisGenePoolAlive, although having the latter on our team the last time proved no use as he ran off only to phone us telling us he was wearing no pants. Anyway, we were three points down in every round as a result of being sans Jap 'cos the first bonus question was a Japanese question. Not that I'm making excuses or anything but we probably would've won had it not been for those questions and the non-quiz like bonus rounds where people had to ridiculuos, but funny, tasks such as draw Homer Simpson with a crayon in their mouth or wrestle someone with their legs, quiz my ass. But I was helping to build a school in Nepal and that's what really counts. Our team had a healthy, knowledgeable cast and was certainly not missing the cocky sways of FlirtyShoulders who obviously suffers from the Lake Wobegon effect. Well, she was missed for one question about her homeland, and maybe by a certain party in the team but other than that she was missed like a British farmer misses foot-and-mouth.

At times the atmosphere in the quiz hall was like a freshman frat party, being led by one absolute hideous creation of an American. A walking Abercrombie&Fitch advertisement, minus any of the good looks, he high-fived all and sundry and said “dude” quite a lot. I should have put everyone out of their misery and killed him with a butter knife but TheFlamingTits somehow seems to think he is quite different whilst sober. He got lucky, this time. BeligerentCountryman was busy abusing people and walking around with smoke in mouth, wine in left hand and water pistol in right hand. Eventually everybody at the quiz was pissed. T had passed out on TheCorpses lap and when we tried to wake him he directed a full force karate chop towards his dead girlfriend’s jugular. Made certain to mental note that one; 'do not wake T up whilst sleeping as he is liable to kill his own mother’. The quiz ended I think, as I have no real recollection of events from this point on. I know we didn't get to do our group performance which was hands down going to win. A series of bare asses with 'vote for us please' scrawled on them, there was no way we could lose if the clap-o-meter was judging. We'll just never know.

We made it just in time for the England game kick-off. On the way to the 'soccer room' we bumped into some blatant whore who's hoovered more cum out of penises than vacuum cleaners have floor lint. She stopped us and asked where we were from, we told her Iwate, and she said "You guys are from Iiiiiiiiiiiwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate? Oooooooooooooooh". It's good to know our good reputation has traveled well around the archipelago. You would never have guessed there was a World Cup quarter-final on in that room. People laid back and calm as if they were watching a documentary on the entrepreneurial wizard behind cocktail umbrellas. We tried to drum up some atmosphere until one of the girls in front of us asked us to stay quiet as she was concentrating on the game. I was lost for words. How do you respond to someone asking you to stay quiet during a football game? Obviously first thoughts were glass her and burn the body, but I've gotten accustomed to that sort of person here in Iwate and it was good to know that it wasn't only my prefecture that got stuck with absolute losers. The game passed as did England’s chances of the World Cup, and my chances of winning World Cup Dream Team as half myplayers said auf wiedersehen with the demise of Argentina and England.

Leaving the ecstatic, atmospherically charged, 'soccer room' we started looking for a party in some of the rooms but being the JET programme most people had gone to sleep early hoping that the next day would be a rainbow filled day of hap-hap-happy internationalisation and ego-buffering by parading around Japanese people and basking in the attention of being different. We raided enough rooms to realise nothing was gonna happen so we decided to take it back to our room. On the way back we met three stragglers from Aomori looking for something to do as well. One of them suggested mixed onsen. Two minutes later we were all naked boozing under the morning sun. The onsen was an over-sized bucket filled with tepid vaginal fluid by the looks of it. We’d most likely gotten in on the wrong end of some inter-JET copulation exchanging, and discharging, of prefectural juices. It also had a strange brown hue to it too, but the only floaters I noticed were TheFlamingTits breasts. Had she been aboard the Titanic it would now be doing pleasure cruises off of Southampton. Occasioanly my hands or elbows would brush against a breast, not purposely I might add, as it was extremley difficult to maintain balance in the small tub.

TheImmigrant was the first to get out which was a surprise since he is normally the last person to do anything. I've never seen anyone dither so much. He could actually dither in complete happiness on an infinite radial plane without it ever bothering him. We took our eye off him for two seconds in the Nohe train station and found him dithering by the shinkansen ticket dispenser for ten minutes, and he wasn't even getting on a train. In the small hours PrivateScouser got to engage in some field-ops on TheFlamingTits own landmines and crept into her foxhole from some deep, behind the lines, penetration. It had been 11months in the making for TheFlamingTits and in the morning she was on Cloud 9 praising the Lord, Jesus and anyone that crossed her gaze. It also turned out that we didn't finish last in the quiz, we finished second last. We can't even lose properly. Boo to us.

The next day we pulled a group dither around the lakeshore in the rain taking in the few attractions before we set off back on the road to Iwate. It was good to finally realise that Iwate is not just a unique case of a prefecture being over flooded with socially inept morons from Alberta and beyond and that others have had to suffer the same fate as the brave few here in the Iwate State Penitentiary. It was a successful night all round with some getting their bit, others pining for a bit, me prepared to wait for a bit and most-of all everyone doing their bit. Whatever fun we had that weekend we'll never be able to quantify against the happiness and profound changes we helped forge into the lives of Nepalese children.


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net