LD's Guide to Japan

means the sun is down by the time I get home from work.  That is a major downer.

I have to prepare a one-to-two-minute monologue for an audition this coming weekend and I’ve got nothin yet, although I was thinking of doing one of Bateman’s from American Psycho.

Any other suggestions?

Today I went, as I do every Wednesday, to Maezawa Elementary School and was told right away in the morning that my students may not be themselves today.  Over the weekend one of the first-graders had gone to Tokyo for a kidney transplant.  His body, however, rejected the kidney and he passed away shortly after the surgery.  The entire school attended his funeral yesterday.

Being only here a few months, I didn’t get the chance to know him very well, which in itself is a little sad, but it also means it’s not emotionally affecting me to the point where I can’t work.  All day at school, though, you could feel a little bit of emptiness.  Everyone was quiet, somber.  I don’t really know how much kids understand about death at their ages, so I don’t know how much they feel the impact of the loss.  But while they were quieter than usual, they were still at least able to focus—they didn’t seem distracted or depressed in any way as far as I could tell.

In any case, my heart goes out to his family.  I can’t even imagine what they must be going through.

I’m always amused by how popular President Obama is here in Japan.  Even in this little country town, I get homework handed into me with doodles of his face in the margins.  I was teaching the word ‘can’ (as in ”anything you can do I can do better”) to my first-year junior high students today when they suddenly and without warning began chanting, “Yes we can!  Yes we can!” in the middle of class, just as I had so often heard at Obama rallies last year.  When I tell my students that I met him and shook his hand, they ask me timidly, “are you famous?”

In Kindergarten, however, the kids are pretty much the exact opposite of timid.  They have this wonderful little prank here called a “kancho” (“kancho” actually means “enema” in Japanese, if that gives you an indication of what kind of prank this is) in which they put their hands together and stick their index fingers out like they’re making a pretend gun with their hands, and then they stick those outstretched index fingers right into the center of your butt as hard as they can.  The boys think it’s hilarious.  The girls also have a bizarre obsession with my butt, but they usually just try to pull my pants down instead of kancho-ing me.  Most of the day when I work at Kindergarten, I have to walk around with one or both hands behind me blocking my butt.

Typhoon Melor made its way to my region today.  I woke up at about 5am to the sound of a siren coming from a van that passed outside my window, and then woke up again every 10 minutes as it circled back around and passed several more times.  All the locals are shocked because the surrounding mountains here have always protected the area from typhoons, so it’s impressive that this one has made it this far.  They’re not used to seeing typhoons here, so they’re, I think, erring on the side of caution.

There’s no need to worry, though, because it is very significantly weaker than it was when it hit Tokyo earlier this week, and it’s also moving rather quickly, so it should be out of here within a day or two at most.

For safety’s sake, however, all the Elementary and Junior High Schools in the region are closed today and the students get the day off.  The teachers, on the other hand, still have to come to school like normal (phooey), so I’m here at school with not much to do today.

Also, I didn’t think about the fact that there would be no school lunch today.  I noticed that all the other teachers have brought their lunches today, but I’ve got nothing.  I’m sure they won’t care if I go somewhere to get lunch, but it is raining and crazy windy outside, so it’ll be kind of a pain.  Oh well.  As the Japanese would say: “shyou ga nai” (“what can you do”).