I have a job. I forget that sometimes.

It occurs to me that I've somewhat neglected discussion on that thing that occupies 9 hours of my life every day, and the blog's been missing out on some comedy gold as a result. As such, bear with me as I break from madcap adventures (which will be addressed later in this post, I promise) to give you...

WHAT I DID TODAY!

6:30 am: Punch alarm clock. Go back to bed.

7:00 am: Wake, shower, make breakfast. Today: 2 eggs sunny-side up, toast, coffee. (I must maintain my culture in the face of what is to come.)

8:00 am: Walk to work. Pull some water out of the communal hot-water-tap (every grade-level group of teachers in the Teacher's Office has their own hot water boiler at the end of the row- this is consistent among all my schools- these guys drink a LOT of tea) and have another cup of coffee.

8:15 am: Morning meeting. Listen to reports of suspicious people, arson, missing shoes, bicycle theft, and student activity- who's smoking in front of the 7-11, who's been spotted out late at the restaurants and bars when they really ought to be studying (Students + Bars = OK, but OK + Late = Bad), employee gossip and the like. The meetings are MCed by the Vice Principal while the principal himself presides to one side and oversees the action, occasionally adding a coment or a "Thank you for your kindness."

8:30 am: Homeroom. I sit in the teacher's office and stare at the walls. In the classrooms, they might be discovering the lost secrets of Atlantis. I would never be the wiser. Coffee #3.

9:00 am: Class Formally Begins. First hour, I run speaking tests with Mr. Banno, an altogether cool guy who teaches the 3rd-grade English class and is also the school's "Discipline Teacher"- which gains him a seat on the administrative row in the Teacher's Office! His English is frighteningly good, and he and I make geeky language jokes about Japanese dialects and English slang.

Speaking tests are conducted thusly: Students memorize a dialogue from the textbook starring the lovable and easy-to-pronounce Emi, Mark, Ken and Yumi. Today's Dialogue (not, as thought previously, the Videogame Debate- sorry, Em, that's next week): Mark Goes to the Doctor. It's five or so lines total, featuring Mark and, not surprisingly, a Doctor. Banno-sensei and I take up a position in the subarctic hallway (in Japan, the classrooms are heated, but the halls are not) and pairs come out and perform for us. The first round of these go easily.

In the textbook, they've got a "Toolbox" section with helpful extra pieces of English. Today, the kids learned to ask "What's the matter with you?"- sparking a nice quick explanation from Andrew-Sensei that we in America really don't say that unless our next line is "Are you stupid?" The textbook writers are well-meaning, but often out of touch. The kids learn to say "What's the matter?" instead.

9:45 am: First hour ends. Ten minute break. Tea.

9:55 am: Second hour, with Furui-sensei, a kind woman about 50ish (maybe) who stands about 4'8" in heels. The moment I get through the door, a cheery 3rd-grader walks up to me, sticks out his hand, and says "Hi, Motherf*****!" with the biggest, most innocent smile in the world. He's a big American movie buff. Every day, he's got another curse to turn the air blue, and when I explain (DELICATELY!) why it's wrong to say, he laughs and waves as he returns to his seat. "Donmai! Donmai!"... the Japanese way of saying "Never Mind"- how never mind goes from Never Mind to Don't Mind to Donmai is a mystery to me. All my kids, courtesy of Japanese language-acquisition, butcher "Don't Mind"- that, "Sankyuu!" and "Bai-Bai" have been full-on adopted to the point that most of them don't know they're speaking English when they say it.

Later during class, we're administering the Speaking Test when a girl comes up, gives a fairly good performance and recieves a fairly good score. She sees the paper, and looks as flustered as any human being can be. She protests in Japanese for a few seconds, turns to her friend and quickly conferences, and then turns back to me and Furui-Sensei. In careful English laced with exasperation, she exclaims: "I... was... PERFECT!"

10:40 am: 10 minute break. I keep laughing about "Perfect", have another cup of tea.

10:50 am: 3rd Hour. Again, with Furui-Sensei. At the beginning of class, there's a group of boys in the back who won't sit down- about eight of them just cluster at the back, trying to hide what's going on in the middle of their little circle. The Mighty Gaijin goes to investigate. Two boys are crouched on the floor, doing their best imitation of Sumo wrestlers. They stomp, they bow, they rush each other and one tosses the other against the classroom door. He claps, smiles, and squats to mime recieving a drink in an impossibly tiny cup from one of the boys in the circle. The victor then looks up at me, and says:

"Ohh!! Andoryu-sensei! sumo shiteiru? ie, ie. Do... you... know... Japanese Sumo?"

"Of course, but it's English class now. Not sumo class."

"Ano sa, yattemiyou?"

With only that warning, the kid stomps once and hurls himself at me. He is the world's tiniest sumo wrestler. He's not a fat kid, nor is he particularly strong, and he keeps trying to toss me around as I lead him back to his seat and indicate to my combatant that now might be a good time to sit down.

11:35 am: 10 minute break. We now laugh about Hi Mofo, Perfect, and Littlest Sumo.

11:45 am: 4th Hour. Banno-sensei, more speaking tests, and an ultimately uneventful hour (aside from the theatrics that some of these kids put into their dialogues- "I think I have a medicine! Err... Headicine! Medicache! HEADACHE!") which passes fairly quickly, given that we're still sitting in the hallway slowly freezing.

12:30 pm: LUNCH! Today was a bento day- for three dollars, we get a box of cooked white rice, a packet of miso soup (to be mixed with hot water and drank from your coffee cup), and a box of assorted small portions of things that are alternatively delicious and terrifying. Some pickled stuff, some tempura, a dollop of thin noodles covered in sauce that looks and smells like axle grease. It's still better than the normal school lunches, which can be unassumingly normal (bread, soup, potatoes, meat) or terrifyingly Japanese (whole fish about the size of sardines, to be eaten whole- head, bones, digestive tract all intact- in one of two varieties: plain, or stuffed so full of fish eggs that their little bodies are bursting) - and no matter how crazy it is, I eat it out of a certain sense of cultural ambassadorship. The little fishies are actually starting to taste a whole lot better than they did when I first got here- my tastebuds have decided to walk off the job.

1:00 pm: Cleaning Time. I sweep the teacher's room with the Vice Principal.

1:15 pm: Fifth Hour. Class with Nambu-sensei and the 2nd graders (in America, 8th grade). This class is calm, compared to Sumo Sumo Mayhem, but they like to ask questions. Today, they wanted to know if I: a) Bleached my hair (no) , b) Wear color contacts (no), c) Have a girlfriend (no!) d) want to date *this student* (NO!!!!!!). This is the same class, last week, that I walked up behind a pair of students chatting and generally ignoring Nambu-sensei, and they nearly fell out of their chairs in shock and fear, exclaiming loudly in Japanese that I was like a "Kaiju." What's a Kaiju? A giant monster. Like Godzilla- Gojira around these parts.

2:00 pm: Sixth Hour. I didn't have to teach this hour today- so Andoryujira prepped for tomorrow and messed around with the email on the cellphone.

After a whole lot more sitting around, preptime, and chatting with students and teachers, I went home at 5:00, opened up the laptop, and tapped out this entry. That's today.

Now, we'll go back in time really quick and touch on what I did with my weekend.

Friday, I left school and hopped on the bike to entertain some curiosity. Turns out I have to ride one kilometer to leave all conceit of "city life" behind and find...


The Wastelands. The moment you get out of town, as if you've crossed a magic line of demarcation, tightly-packed buildings and tiny roads give way to unthinkably large expanses and the looming mountain range that stands sentinel between Lake Biwa and the city of Kyoto.

I present, also, a little quirky shrine I found in the middle of one of these fields:


And its strangely dizzying shrine lantern.


Just for contrast, later that night I found this crazy thing:


This shop sells nothing but implements with which to cook beef. Some things don't need my wordy self getting in the way of their natural beauty. That evening, dinner at a Nabe restaurant- the ever-popular everything-in-the-pot winter food- and I ended up having a delicious bowl of something that I couldn't identify- so I asked- and it turns out that I've committed an unpardonable sin.

I have eaten whale. In my defense, I didn't order it. But it was tasty- guilt is delicious, evidently.

Saturday was a wash- didn't do anything exploration-tastic or touristy. Just had a few friends over to cook risotto, as we were all having garlic withdrawal. The house is now safe from vampires.

Sunday, however, was a different story. The White Stripes were set to play at Zepp Osaka in Osaka's port district, and I, by hook or by crook, was going to go. The friends who were going to accompany me decided to either get sick or be lazy, so I alone rode the train in. I alone met a few really cool photography students, one of whom had just returned from a two-year study-abroad in Britain, and as such speaks the coolest English in the world (I don't know why, but people who speak a second language with a clearly identifiable accent are AWESOME in my book) and I alone strolled confidently up to the doors of Zepp Osaka to find...

That Jack White has lost his voice, and as such has postponed or perhaps cancelled the Japan tour.

Disappointing, but it did let me poke around the port island a bit before the sun went down. It was eerie- on Sunday evening, the majority of the island seemed deserted.
There was a flea market in a parking lot just to the left of the above picture, with a live band and a cover charge. I tried getting a picture of it, but none of the pictures quite captured the Mad-Max flavor of this tent city in the middle of a gravel parking lot surrounded by this concrete insanity...
There was a sign, however, that pointed to further items of interest...

The Osaka World Trade Center! Seems all Trade Center architecture shares the "Let's make this a SERIOUSLY big building" ethic.

The trade center's the one on the right. On the left is the NTT (Think AT&T, Japan-style) building.


This is the view from the harbor behind the Trade Center, at sunset...

After that, I got some dinner at the Christon Cafe- a church-themed bar/restaurant in Osaka. Gold, crosses, red velvet, a giant statue of Mary... It was sacrilicious. The interesting thing here is that they have no idea why what they're doing is subtly wrong- communion-wine vessels for salad dressing, disco balls over crucifixes.

Anyways, that was pretty much my weekend, and from now on I'll be giving better reports on what's going on at school. The little rockband that could, for the record, is still practicing every time the brass band meets- and they're getting better. They're still not going to open for the White Stripes, or anything...

but it looks like they've got some time to practice before the White Stripes come back.

pax