Where the heck have I been?

Busy.

We've entered the crazy season, as far as school in Japan goes. The third graders are studying like demons for their highschool entrance tests, and last week at Hayama Junior High was an exam week. Normally, this would mean no class- but I got the chance to go teach elementary school again. My respect for the elementary schoolteachers of the world has leapt to unimaginable heights- it's a never-ending song and dance show, and the teachers I see in the classroom (the endless founts of energy and enthusiasm) are completely different people than the grey shapes I saw slumped in the teacher's office. Perhaps I just made it there on a bad day. Everyone was happy- everyone seems to enjoy their jobs- but they also seem to crash HARD the moment class ends. The kids don't seem to notice.

The kids, in fact, are terrifyingly charming. Last week, while I was up doing my song and dance, I was approached by a pair of little girls who, in perfect English, asked my name and how I was doing. Turns out these girls are from Brazil and Peru, and just wanted to talk- they're having a hard time getting along with their classmates, they get a bit of flak for being foreign- and were thrilled as anything to have an English-speaking teacher around. We chatted for awhile about how much we missed stuff from home, and then they both wandered back to class. They were fourth-graders. The moment they walked away, I was swarmed by kids from the other classes; holding their hands out for handshakes, producing tiny pencils and slips of paper for me to sign, asking me to jump and touch the ceiling, and generally treating me as if I were an alien rockstar that had just crawled from a crater (rather than an alien teacher that had flown Northwest like everybody else).

The middle school kids are just as cool, but for different reasons. What with the testing in progress and graduation just around the corner, a sense of fatalism and The Long Goodbye has settled over the school. For most of February, I was at Hayama Jr. High- a fifteen-minute bikeride through a few ricefields away from my house. I've since been transferred to the next school- which means I won't see the Hayama 3rd graders in class ever again. They treat graduation like a funeral here- I didn't see a single kid happy to be leaving middle school. They talked about their highschool entrance exams with a kind of resignation- those that passed tried to keep it to themselves, those that failed were SHATTERED. I got a lot of "don't forget me" comments, and a few students, on my last day, walked up and said in unison "I want to don't say goodbye!"

I didn't have the heart to correct 'em.

Got a letter yesterday from one of the students at that school, routed through interschool mail, as I'm now at my next school. It reads:

"Dear Mr. Andrew Moll,

Thanks to your help, I like English. I'll never forget you. I hope you are well,

Sincerely Yours,

Shimada Yuko."

Stuck to the letter was a vending-machine photograph- which is lucky, as I had no idea who Shimada Yuko was. Turns out it's a girl in one of the 3rd grade classes who I honestly can't recall having talked to, or even really called upon in class. One of the quiet kids. I'm confused and touched all at once.

As most everyone is finished with the book, lessons as of late have been "Andrew-Sensei's Crazy Games"- so work is fun. Those of you thinking you'd like to teach English in Japan: BUY GAMES BOOKS. Start reading them now. Test a few, get a list ready. As the curriculum is mandated from upon high by the Ministry of Education, your flexibility is measured entirely in ten-minute games that you can sneak in at the beginnings and ends of classes.

Outside of work, life in Japan continues to be an adventure. Snapshot:

I was wandering Kyoto the other day with Veronica, and we stumbled across a cafe hidden underneath an art gallery, around the corner from the Teramachi shopping/temple district. It's down a precarious set of stairs papered in neon fliers from every musical act that has come, is coming or will come to the Kansai area, and the entire deal appears to have been excised from the active resistance zone of an Eastern European post-Soviet republic. Every surface is weathered and pitted, the door leading in hangs (calculatedly) just shy of true, and the heavily leaded glass filters all varieties of incoming light to "hazy dusk". You sit at large wooden tables on benches bolted to the concrete walls, and the layers of chipping paint give way to dimples and scratches that the proprietors seem to have no intention of fixing. It's pretentious, it's a little loud, it's a magnet for art students, and I absolutely love it. The level of care and craftsmanship that it took to make this place look neglected and abandoned is beautiful, seamless, and incredibly Japanese. The name?

Cafe Independants.
pax