The Latest Thanksgiving

No news is, after all, good news. I've taken the last little bit of time to be wholly boring and take care of some mundanities of life- you've gotta do laundry SOMETIME. I've returned to the first school I taught at, and will be there for the next two months- there's a big break in the middle for the weeklong new year's celebration, with a half-week break before and after the holiday itself. As such, I get to spend a lot of time with the Ritto Jr. High kids- and I am proud to report that they remember a great deal more of what I taught them than I did. I walked in the door on Friday, and happened to bump into a fairly familiar-looking group of girls hanging out in the front hallway before school. One looked up, smiled, yelled "Andoryu-Sensei!" and proudly raised the Horns of Rock. The rest followed suit. Even after a two-month absence, my rock band remembers.

So work is a lot of fun- the kids surprise me in little ways every day, from English they know (that I certainly didn't teach 'em- there's a group of the "cool kids" whose catchphrase is an exaggerated, over-the-top "Oh my Gawd!") to Rocking Out, to asking me for dating advice ("Andoryu-sensei, there's a boy in my class I like. What shall I do?")- of all the schools, this one has really decided to treat me like a member of the family.

A source of concern, however, is the fact that in two neighboring prefectures there's been a rash of disappearances and murders that seem to target middle-school and elementary-school girls. Just last week, in Tochigi, a second-grader vanished on the way home from school. Witnesses say that a man, 30-40 years old, drove up in his car, hopped out, picked her up, threw her in the back and drove off. Her body was found later, in a field.

This, understandably, has all of us quite concerned. We're kicking students out of school a half-hour early (4:30, rather than 5:00) so that it's still light out when they walk home. On Friday, all of the teachers got up and walked out of the teacher's room (largely without explanation!), and when I followed them out (this is a large part of my day, just kinda following the crowd and hoping I'm not screwing up) they explained that we were going to stand at all the exits of the school and make sure kids headed home in pairs or threes- never alone- and implore them not to dawdle. This took some work to understand- I'm not familiar with the vocabulary for "ensuring our children aren't abducted".

So far, nobody in Shiga's been a victim. But every few weeks, a note gets tossed onto my desk with the comment of "Please read this" emblazoned in English at the top that describes suspicious people near the station, or approaching kids on the street. It's a dangerous time to be a kid in Japan.

None of this seems to be fazing the students at all. They aren't afraid- they just go about their business, studying for the high school exams and worrying about the boy they like that sits next to them in homeroom. Just like American kids.

After school, after escorting the last students to the exit, I hosted the JET program late-Thanksgiving early-Christmas party. There were perhaps 30 English-speaking people crowded around a bunch of one-and-a-half foot tall tables in my living room, a DJ, and enough stuffing, mashed potatoes, and turkey to feed my entire Japanese neighborhood for a week. I'll be living off the leftovers for quite some time.

The next day, enjoying a post-Thanksgiving leftover luncheon with some friends, I was washing dishes when a pair of my students tentatively knocked at my door. They were riding their bikes by the house when they heard our loud English voices (my walls are like paper, held together at the seams with naught but good intentions), and they wanted to say hello. So we sat around and chatted. They were two of my best students, and as such impressed the heck out of the other teachers at the lunch. This is one of the things I love about teaching in a small town- my students are literally EVERYWHERE. I have not gone a single day without running into at least one in the street, or at the shopping district, or in a restaurant- and they all speak WAY more English outside of class than they do in school. During a lesson, getting one to respond or speak up is a combination of cajoling, pleading and outright trickery, but the moment the bell rings and they run into me in the hall, or on the street, they're downright loquacious.

After lunch, we went to Kyoto to pick up some Christmas gifts in the big shopping district of Teramachi. Teramachi, adjacent to the geisha district (yeah, that one- if you've read or seen Memoirs of a Geisha, you know what I'm talking about), has been a shopping center since Kyoto was the capital. There are stones in the sidewalk poudly emblazoned "Since 1670"- there are junk stores and doll workshops in this place one hundred years older than my country. We had dinner at Watami, a small-plates shop where the objective is to order as many different plates of food as you can, stuff yourself silly, and then order more. There's a central difference between dining in Japan and in America that makes itself evident at places like this- in America, you order ONCE, and that one order will supply you with enough food that you're not hungry again for a long, long time. In Japan, you are EXPECTED to continually call for more food. Everyone shares from small plates in the center of the table, and the sheer variety of dishes you can sample is mind-boggling. You almost never have just one thing for dinner, unless you're dining alone or at one of the many greasy-spoon Ramen or Donburi (the "stuff on rice" cheap-eats) restaurant.

After a marathon meal, we waddled back to the trains and shipped back out. It felt really late (the sun sets here at roughly 5:00 now), but it was still only 11:00. I made it home before midnight. I feel like an old man.

Next week is the last full week before winter vacation. I'm making a few elementary school visits, and as soon as winter vacation hits my adventure season begins. I'm going to visit Kobe (why? Why not?) with the proprietor of my local Ramen shop (cool guy!) and then I'm going to buy a "Juhachi kippu", or "18-ticket", that gives me unlimited rail access for something like a week. The plan? I'm heading North. I will have a white Christmas in Hokkaido- evidently, it's the one place nobody goes over the winter break. Not sure if they'll have Internet access up there, but that's a bridge I'll burn when I get to it.

Today? Today, given my zig-zag insanity the rest of the week, I think I'll go relax by the lake in Otsu- it'll be cold, but that city EMBODIES the lazy, sleepy, laid-back Sunday.

pax