Snow, Sumo, Students and Scenery

I’ve realized I haven’t included any winter shots of my town. It did snow here, and it was quite beautiful. Here are two photos from Ochidani (one of my elementary schools up a bit in the mountains). Those are kindergarten kids playing in the snow, it’s pretty adorable. The snow would usually last for 1-3 days then melt. It would snow about once a week for about a month, that was it. (hahahaha)

Also, on March 2nd I went to the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium and watched SUMO! There are 6 official Grand Sumo tournaments every year. Three in Tokyo, and one each in Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka. Luckily I live close to Osaka so that’s where I went. The tournaments last for 15 days and we went on the first day. Knowing only a little about sumo tournaments, we went really early and consequently, not many spectators were there, as the lower your ranking, the earlier you go on. Most people just want to watch the famous wrestlers slap and shove each other and around 3:30 things started to pick up and for the last few fights it was packed. You could feel energy in the air, and even though I know very little about sumo and even less about the specifics of certain wrestlers, I was excited. There are even a couple foreign sumo wrestlers (which surprised me) and one of them was in the top 10.

These guys are really as huge as you think they are. Some of them weigh an easy 300lbs and are usually taller than your average Japanese. Little known fact, they also smell like baby powder! While we were waiting for friends outside the gymnasium, they would walk by to get into the building, and a distinctive smell of baby powder lingered afterwards.


In Japan, they also have a different semester system than in Canada, so last week was graduation for my Junior High kids. Here is a photo of some of the graduates, in particular three of the boys who are brave enough to talk to me every now and again. I’ll miss them. This week I have my elementary graduation, so photos of that will appear in the future.

Lastly, this past weekend I stayed in my town (the first time in a while I’ve done that) and went for a hike. I recently found a mountain trail and on Saturday I walked part of the circuit. Japanese mountains are very steep, so trails are mostly a series of switch-backs up and down the mountain side.

I’m excited to have found this path as I’ve wanted to climb a mountain for a while, and I hope to do this trail more often as a reason to get outside, and also to appreciate the beautiful spring weather we are enjoying. Randomly I got a pruned branch of a cherry tree, and now it’s in my house just getting ready to bloom. April is official cherry blossom season and my town has a mountain side that has been cleared and then replanted in cherry trees, which also has a path through it. Photos will come once the blooming has properly commenced.

Happy Marketing Ploy Day!

In Japan, March 14th is "White Day", the day women get gifts from the men they gave presents to on Valentines Day (Because in Japan, Valentines Day is about giving men presents). I wikipedia-ed the reason behind this, and apparently in the 1960s a marshmallow company realized money was to be made by guilting men into buying presents for women a month later. According to Wikipedia, "sometimes the term sanbai kaeshi (三倍返し, sanbai kaeshiliterally, "thrice the return") is used to describe the generally recited rule that the return gift should be two- to three-times the cost of the Valentine's gift." I have no idea if this is really practiced, I'll ask a Japanese friend and let you know.

Many of my male JET friends received chocolate from students/fellow teachers, and have likewise felt they needed to return the favour and bought chocolates to give out today. I gave out nothing on Valentines Day, and (perhaps consequently) received nothing today. This is actually a good thing, as I gave up chocolate for lent and it would just be a terrible tease.

Eigo-no kyoshi desu. (I am an English teacher.)

Watashi wa Joy desu. Eigo no kyoshi desu. Nihongo-no benskyoshimasu. That’s right, I’m Joy, an English teacher who is studying Japanese. I came to Japan with the ability to count to 10, say apple (ringo) and hiccough (shakri), “Excuse me, I’m sorry for being late (sumimasen, osoku narimashita) and the basic greetings. Useful.. maybe?

Now, my vocabulary has increased manifold, and yet I still feel helpless when staring at menus, signs and any printed matter. Japanese is a difficult (muzugashi) laungage. But I'm learning. I have learned hiragana and katakana (two of the alphabets). I have learned the kanji for “men” “women” “mountain” “river”. Gold star, right? What drives me crazy is that the important words are usually in kanji, which to my untrained eye, look pretty but meaningless.

I am working my way through a correspondence course that JET is a part of and I go to a Japanese class once a week. I am getting better all the time (can’t get much worse) and the more I study Japanese the more I learn about English, and how my students are trying to figure things out. Sentence structure is different in Japanese, so are tenses, plurals, pronunciation etc etc. Today’s lesson that I helped with at Junior high was about pronouncing ~ed on different words, which is something that I’ve never thought about as a native English speaker. But the ~ed sound changes from “cooked” to “played” to “visited.” Muzugashi desu ne? (It's difficult, itsn't it?)

Happily, so far basic Japanese seems to have more regularities than irregularities, (when compared to English) and pronunciation tends to follow a set of actual rules. Which is good for me, but makes things difficult for Japanese people trying to say English words. A common tactic for teaching English in Japan is to put words into “katakana” which is a vague approximation of what the word would be using the Japanese “alphabet”. Words like “cat” turn into kato, door into doa, book into buku etc. Which isn’t English. The more I hear it, the more I understand it, but that does not make it English.

On one hand I want to drill correctly pronounced English into them, on the other, I’m getting increasingly confused as to what actual expectations I have of my students and what is within their grasp. It’s confusing. But I gambatte (do my best, well, that’s not the right way to conjugate that.. but I’ve never been great at verb tenses.) and treasure the kids who say "television" not "terrrrrevison". In an effort to improve my understanding of what English sounds like, I have booked off time in the summer from July 29-August 11 to immerse myself in the English speaking world of Southern Ontario. Till then I'll keep staring at kanji, practice reading katakana, and read my Japanese textbuku.