Graduation

Two weeks ago was graduation for my kindergarten and four elementary schools. Kindergarten really isn't a graduation ceremony as it is a 'completion' ceremony. I was corrected when I called it graduation, so I figured it wouldn't be that formal and I show up last Wednesday in my normal school attire: track pants and a t-shirt. As if I don't stick out enough. All the parents are in full formal wear...as are the kindergartners. I didn't even know they made suits that size.

The Elementary school graduations followed on Friday, all at the same time. At first I was a little annoyed that I wouldn't be able to attend each one, but this is a blessing in disguise. Graduations are boring. It was 2 hours of speeches by old people. So I would make my appearance at one, then run out again after being there for 30 minutes.

I arrived at my favorite 6th grade class last. Near the end, as the kids were saying their good-byes to the teachers, and songs were sung by the younger kids to the 6th graders, about half of them started to cry. Who cries at an elementary school graduation? I did find myself feeling sad though, cause I realized I wasn't going to be teaching these kids ever again. I didn't cry though. Real men don't cry.

Whale Watching

I spent this past weekend on Zamami, a small island south-west of Okinawa. Zamami has a total area of about 17 km, and consists of three small villages totaling 1,500 people. Dave is the lucky man who gets to have this mini-paradise all to himself. He even has a couple of nearby islands with schools on them that he kayaks to! Zamami makes it's money through tourism, and that's why we came: whale watching!

We were told we had a lucky day. We found a mommy and a baby swimming around and saw them breach a few times. The rest of the time was keeping a close distance on them, marveling as they would come up for air and sometimes give a flipper or tail flip.

To get to Zamami, we took a big ferry. To go after the whales, we took a smaller boat. I learned about half way through that my body doesn't like the ups and downs.

We stayed the night and did a walking tour of the island the next day. We hiked up to some excellent observation points overlooking Zamami and other local islands. Half way through, it started pouring, and we were lucky enough to spend the next hour walking back in the rain.

Kabuki

Yuka came again this weekend and we spent the entire time in Naha, Okinawa's capital. On Saturday, we went to see our first Kabuki play. The audience consisted mostly of old people and one huge group of US military wives. It lasted for about 2 hours, with the first hour being a humorous introduction to kabuki, and the second half being the actual production. From what I could get from it, the story was about a woman who was really a fox, marries a man, they have a kid, and then she has to run away for some reason. I couldn't really ask Yuka what was going on because 1) she slept through half of it, and 2) Kabuki dialogue is like trying to follow Sylvester Stallone perform Shakespeare.

The coolest part were the costumes and special effects. A lot of the effects had men dressed all in black (to "hide" themselves on stage) move set pieces, or, for example, when the fox lady returned to the forest, they would carry candles to give the image of the candles floating by themselves. You have to suspend belief and pretend you don't see them.

For an excellent example of this, I highly recommend watching the Matrix Ping Pong video.

Afterwards, we went to Itoman, south of Naha, to the Okinawa Peace Memorial Park. Walked around, took pictures, and ate ice cream...like any good tourist visiting a park that is a memorial to the 200,000 people that died in the Battle of Okinawa. On the way back to Naha, we found an awesome second-hand video game shop. I bought a Super Famicon, Chrono Trigger, and Street Fighter 2 for $40.

A break-down of old school Nintendo systems and their Japanese names.

Nintendo = Famicon (short for Family Computer)
Super Nintendo = Super Famicon
Nintendo 64 = Nintendo

Then we went out and had awesome yakiniku!

Lawson's!

I'm going to Iriomote next month with Yuka and some other JETs! This time, I bought my plane ticket at the local Lawson. Japanese convenience stores are the coolest places ever. They look identical to American one's, but the difference is that the food is safe to eat and you can pay your bills.

Most of my bills are withdrawn automatically. But for the ones that aren't, I get a paper bill with a barcode that I take to Lawson's and pay there. Since I don't have a credit card, when I bought my plane ticket online, they gave me an ID# that I used at Lawson's to buy my plane ticket! I also pay for my Amazon.co.jp orders there too! Cool!

A Closer Look

This is an honest look at what I do everyday:

I am an English teacher at all the elementary schools in Ogimi. Even though I work every day, I only appear at each school once a week. In elementary school, English class is a break from the normal routine, and most of the kids view it as play time. I think it's fair to say that I am just an extra curricular teacher. So when "real" school stuff needs to take place, I'll have canceled classes for the day. Like on Wednesday. Grades 1-6 were taking some test, so I did not do anything. And it's this "not doing anything" that best summarizes my job.

When I first got my welcome DVD from Okinawa, I was expecting the camera to follow JETs into the classroom and provide a glimpse of what was expected for me as a teacher. I had never done any kind of teaching before before and I had no idea how to approach the job. Instead, it was over 2 hours of following different JETs to parties, some culture lessons, nice vacation spots, etc. I remember commenting "Looks like JETs don't teach". Looking back, that DVD was almost spot on.

My contract requires me to show up at school from 8:15-4:00 every day, regardless if I teach a lesson or not. Out of that almost 8 hours, I teach about 3 classes a day, each 45 minutes. So, about 2 hours and 15 minutes of my 8 hour day is working. And I would say half of that 2 hours is fending little kid's fingers away from my private places.

What am I doing for the rest of the time? Nothing. But I'm pretty good at not doing nothing. I enjoy spending most of my time in the break room, which is a tatami room with table for coffee and snacks. If you were to show up at my school, you would most likely find me there either studying Japanese, reading a book, or asleep.

Yes, I sleep on the job. But I didn't start it! I got the idea when I saw another teacher asleep at her desk. Then I saw a teacher asleep on the floor in the snack room. I even once went to the town hall and my superintendent was asleep in his chair. So I guess it's okay. Nothing beats a power nap, anyway.

JET has a motto of "every situation is different", which is true. I know people who work at only one high school and work 10 hour days. To those people, I say, I take my 2 hours of work very seriously.

So why do people quit JET? If it pays so much for so little work, who would want to leave? I think half of them are people who just want to go home. They get tired of not being able to read the signs and not communicating well with people at school. I think the other half are people tired of doing nothing. JET is a great 'figuring-out-what-to-do-with-your-life' job. There is, after all, plenty of time to think about it. And it seems to take people a year, or two, or three, to figure it out. These people are tired of being a human tape recorder and want their own classroom. That kind of thing.

Next week is my last kindergarten class for the school year (school years go from April-March in Japan). This is awesome because I won't have a kindergarten class for 5 weeks. That means I get a 3-day week for 5 weeks!