Chapter (Week) 5, In Which I Get Cultured

It appears that the habit of stating that the phone is ringing is not limited to the English language.  You know how the phone rings at home and most of the time, someone inevitably yells, "Phone!" as though it`s not the most obvious thing in the world and everyone else can`t hear it ringing?  It happens in Japan too.  I was sitting here, pretending to work as I so often do, and my supervisor is sitting here with her supervisor going over some stuff.  The phone for our desk-pod starts ringing, and he goes, "Ah, denwa (phone)," before proceeding to answer it.  I was amused (probably because I`m the most guilty of this habit at home and I like to know I`m not alone).

My school`s Culture Festival is this weekend.  I`m ridiculously excited.  Before that happens, though, there are two days of performances at the Prefectural Cultural Centre in Tsu.  I guess our facilities aren`t large enough or something.  But the classes who are doing foodstuffs on Saturday are already going around with their tickets (pre-buying means a discount), so I now have tickets for a tea ceremony and yakisoba (fried buckwheat noodles.with sauce, veggies, and sometimes a meat or shrimp).  I love food!  And Culture Fest!  Overall, it just makes me really excited, and like I`m really a part of the community to be able to attend an event like this (school`s culture festivals are usually attended by the community at large, but at the very least by friends and family of the students, as well as the teachers).  Also this is something that appears a lot in anime and they make it seem like one of the greatest things to happen all year.

Wednesday was a plethora of guest performers who are apparently famous, but I`ve never heard of them because I`m not Japanese.  There were four sets of comedy duos, and one guy who seemed to be a combination comedian/singer.  I didn`t understand a lot of it (like, 98%), but sometimes I could get enough of a basic context to understand that they were, in fact, funny even if I didn`t know the exact joke.  One of the Science teachers here has pretty good English (he went with our exchange students to Australia), so he explained to me some of what was going on beforehand, and then a bit after.  We also chatted during the break between programs, and he asked how long I had studied Japanese, since my Japanese is apparently very good (what little I can speak of it).  Naturally, I had to admit that I have zero Japanese training outside of the "Japanese for JETs" textbook and most of what I know is from about 8 years of watching anime.  He then told me that that was how he had learned some of his English pronunciation, by watching English-dubbed anime!  VALIDATION!  Anime is a legitimate learning tool!

I spent the afternoon on Wednesday (the performances only took up the morning) at my desk, looking up some grocery-related kanji (ideographic Japanese writing based on Chinese characters, as opposed to the two phonetic alphabets also in use in Japan.  Because everyone needs three writing systems) and making myself flashcards.  I tried not to draw attention to myself as I did this, because I know I got the stroke order really, really wrong on most of them; I can`t find it online, and I don`t want to offend anyone.

Thursday was full of performances by student clubs and classes.  I will admit that most of the time I had no idea what was going on.  The morning started with a performance by the brass band club, which was fairly talented.  I prefer strings to brass, though, so the second performance was a bit more to my taste.  There were seven students playing the Japanese harp (koto) and one playing the shamisen (Japanese guitar, but I think less a few strings?).  Then there was a video that seemed to be a giant sporting montage done by one of the classes, which was amusing, and full of high-energy English music.  There was some kind of skit about a sports team practice by another class, but beyond that description I have no idea what it was about.  Then came the acoustic guitar club, and holy hell are those kids talented.  They sounded awesome.  My favourite, though, was the last performance of the morning, the dance club.  I was absolutely blown away.  I forget sometimes that dance can actually be a competitive club activity.  (Also, my favourite student - the one from English club who likes the same anime - is in the dance club.  Yes, I have favourites.) 

In the afternoon there was an attendance-optional performance by the drama club, which of course I went to because it would be wrong of me to not support a club I belonged to when I was in high school!  ...And also I didn`t want to go back to the office.  Anyway.  So that was an hour-long one-act play with four cast members, three girls and a boy.  I got the part where one of the girls had a boyfriend that her friends didn`t know about.  Then the boy character comes in and is all awkward with the boyfriend-girl, so I thought it was going to be revealed that he was her boyfriend. Then they were helping her rehearse to break up with the boyfriend for reasons unknown, and the boy character was helping, and I got really confused because it makes no sense that he would be her boyfriend if he`s helping in the breakup rehearsals!  At the end, he`s all dejected and walks away to an empty classroom, and the girl with the boyfriend-breakup goes running after him, so I was assured by the student I was sitting with (my other 3rd year English club student, Mayu) that it was a happy ending, but I really have no idea what exactly was going on.  It was like watching Spanish soap operas on a weekday afternoon when you`re sick and there`s absolutely nothing else on TV.

Also this week was a welcome party for all the new JETs specifically in Tsu (my city ...sort of.  My area used to be its own city, and then it got absorbed).  There was a lot of food from our delicious set-menu meal, some fabulous drinks, and excellent company.  Basically we discovered that we`re all compatible brands of weird, and no one really likes bugs.  (Clarifier: pest-type bugs.  I don`t mean that the restaurant served us bugs and no one liked the dish.  That did not happen.  We were fed meat and seafod.  Normal things.  Just because I know some people`s minds went there.)

Unrelated: I fell off my bike for the first time (shocking, considering I`ve been here for a month and am a competition-level klutz)!  That figures.  My last bike-related injury (slamming my leg off the back when attempting to dismount, causing a bruise at least the size of a tennis ball) is pretty much gone now, so I needed a new one.  But I fell on the way to school, so I got to visit the school nurse`s office!  Our school nurse is a super sweet lady, so I was glad to meet her!  It would have been better without tiny bits of road speckling my arm, but whatever.

Anyway, I`m super-stoked about all the awesome things set to happen tomorrow!  I just have to make it through today in all its utter boring-ness.  It`s Culture Fest prep day, so I think I`ll take to wandering the halls and checking out all the preparations.