3/18/08 Spring is Here, Why Not Eat Some Whale?

The weather has been warm enough that I could venture outside jacketless the last couple days. Spring is still having some hot again/cold again mood swings, but anything is better than the frigid, windy Ashikaga winter. Since the third year students have graduated and so are off of my work schedule, things have been a whole lot less stressful. It's funny, with a third of my kids gone, I have about the same amount of classes to teach as the English teachers at the other schools. So this is what it must be like, I can actually chat with the other teachers, plan a lesson, or clean my desk. Yesterday I even had enough energy to play outside with the kids after my lessons were finished.

Well I have been taking advantage of the warmth and I have had a pretty eventful few days. Not being cold all the time has really brightened my mood. Where to start?

Its only been about a week since the Sea Shepherd conservation group finished hounding the Japanese whaling fleet all over the pacific (article here). It was quite an action filled expedition. At one point two of the whale lovers boarded a Japanese whaling ship, were captured, and were held for two days before being released. The conservationists hurled a barrage of foul smelling rotten butter and other unpleasantries onto the deck of the whaling ships, allegedly earning one of them a slug in his bullet proof vest.

I read about the saga online as it unfolded, interested more because it involved Japan than because I have a strong passion for sea mammals. I saw several pictures of the incidents on the newspapers randomly strewn on coworkers' desks, and I slipped it into a conversation with one of the more advanced English speaking teachers to see how he felt about it. He seemed a bit bewildered about why so many western countries are so rabid about protecting whales. We talked a bit about it, and I'll share the opinion that I have developed. I think that the whales should be protected from extinction, but that they can be hunted responsibly just like any other animals. If whales became as numerous as deer are in Illinois, than it seems that hunting them is acceptable.

Well, I felt like after all the reading and discussion, that I was still missing a vital piece of information. Sure, its easy for someone to say "stop whaling because its wrong, and who eats that stuff anyway?" Its easy to preach to people to stop a practice that you don't fully understand in the first place. So I mentioned that I might like to try whale meat, as its not available in the US, and I probably would not have another chance. My teachers (due to our canned-sardine proximity, what starts off as a two person conversation often turns into a group discussion) were either impressed or amused, and a couple of them even tried to find a place in town where I could satisfy my curiosity. They eventually gave up, saying that I should just go to Tokyo to try some.

Fast forward to the end of last week, when one of the younger teachers proudly declared that he had found a place in town that serves whale, and that he could take me there. Awesome. The funny part was after all of the searching, the restaurant ended up being not 5 minutes from my house, in a little sushi bar that I had already been to once before(I wrote a bit about it and you can relive the memories here). He handed me the little newspaper clipping where he had discovered the place, and I gathered that the whale on the menu was Minke, which I checked online to make sure it isn't endangered or anything (its not).

So me and four other younger Japanese teachers all went out to this place to partake. Maybe half the of them hadn't had whale before either, so we were all in this together. First thing, first, though. Often when you sit down at a place that serves food as well as alcohol, you will be presented with a small dish of food that you did not order and have no choice but to pay for(I believe the word for it is otoshi). I think its purpose is to make a little extra money off of people who may have no intention of ordering food but take up valuable space all the same.

Well, as you can imagine, over the past half year quite an assortment of foul tasting things have been set in front of me. Having already payed for the thing as soon as it hits the table, I usually try to force myself to eat it regardless. Sometimes its a little salad, a strong tasting pickled vegetable, unidentified meat, whatever. In one special instance, at El Mundo (picture here), the table food was a few slices of raw horse meat. Not bad. This time, though, it was an entire skinned fish (minus the head and those damned eyes, mercifully). It had been marinated in a sauce and ended up being quite tasty. We learned later on that the mystery fish was fugu, or poison puffer fish (poison organs removed, I assumed/hoped). This anticlimactic discovery was hilarious to me, as I have been wanting to try fugu for years.

So after our poison fish appetizer and some salads it was whale time. The first dish was whale sashimi, which pretty much involved little raw chunks of the meat in a bowl. My first impression was that the meat was fairly similar to beef only with a small hint of fishiness, but I've never sat and eaten a raw steak so its possible that I just have nothing to reference. The veins of fat in the meat were few, but if I did hit one, chewing through it took some doing.

Whale sashimi


It feels like a bad joke is in order. How about... It was a whale of a time.

Next came the breaded and fried whale pieces. I enjoyed them much more than the first incarnation, as the preparation was a bit closer to what I am accustomed.

It looks safe enough, doesn't it?

We had a third plate that was also quite delicious. This one was in the same little cutlets, but it came unbreaded and cooked more like a traditional beef steak. It looked enough like steak that I didn't even bother to take a picture.

Here's one last picture of a non-whale dish. This was a bit like mashed potatoes, wrapped in a bit of seaweed paper and then deep fried. A good combination of crunchy and creamy.

I guess I was surprised at how much I liked the whale and how fairly normal it was. I had envisioned something like a big pile of steaming blubber and a spoon to eat it with. So there you have it, my first and most likely only whale encounter.

3/14/08 Rockabilly Disaster

Saturday morning I experienced a small earthquake (tiny news blurb here). It was one of the largest ones so far, I think, but still little more than a curiosity. The building's vibrations were accompanied by the sound produced by everything in the apartment jiggling at the same time. Perhaps more like a giant massage than an earthquake. Occasionally I will wake up in the middle of the night due to a pronounced swaying of my bed beneath me. The earthquakes have been mild enough that I don't yet have any reason to fear them. Surely we can be friends.

*******

Saturday night a few of us decided that the time was right to hit the BBC Club. A typical clubby dance music establishment, an important feature of BBC (no idea what the letters stands for) is that it is the only club in town. The two story establishment usually has a couple of DJs going in different rooms at the same time, and we enjoy the atmosphere. Thing is, there are so many unwanted events at the place that getting there on a nice normal day is really a spin of the roulette wheel. Its nice to mix things up, but we show up expecting a certain experience and are sometimes disappointed. The exterior of the building is plastered with publicity posters featuring the varied talent that will appearing in upcoming days. No doubt, the fully literate find the signage quite useful. We, however, are a very dense bunch.

We paid at the door and entered in the usual fashion. The price was a bit higher than usual, which really should be starting to serve as a warning to me to start running and not look back. I had spoken to Rory from England on the cell not five minutes prior, and he had assured me that there were plenty of interesting people present. When I finished ascending the stairs, it became painfully obvious that Rory had left out some small but crucial details. Yes, these were people, and as promised, there were quite a few of them. The particular folks had a few interesting qualities worth mentioning, however. They were predominately middle aged men. They wore a variety of leather jackets and various out-of-place retro suits. Last but not least, they had slicked back pompadours, reminiscent of Grease or an early Elvis album cover. I was confused and scared and angry. Mostly angry. The four of us had just dropped enough cash at the door to purchase a Nintendo DS, and hours of wholesome electronic fun this was not.

Not even these guys could ruin my day so easily, as I was determined to enjoy my night. As we all descended the stair case, I braced myself, not knowing what sort of brain-stinging spectacle I may be about to witness.

There was a live band playing various old school tunes. I gathered from the sayings on people's t-shirts that this was a rockabilly concert, rockabilly being an early style of rock popular in the 50s. The dance floor was quite densely packed, more than I ever seen. Predominantly the same crowd with the funny hair, there was also a woman or two carrying a child, as well as some elementary school aged kids running around. The adult time that I had been hoping for was pretty thoroughly not going to happen.




A small circular clearing had formed in the crowd where some especially devoted looking men had gathered. They waved their arms and legs around in a frantic Elvis sort of dance. It was entertaining to watch, if not completely spastic. One person couldn't keep it up for long, so he would retreat back to the circle and another would quickly take his place in the center. They were serious to the point that just about every single member's shoes were wrapped in black electrical tape, I assume because they had all danced their shoes to tatters. They were interesting to the point that my eyes were fixed on them rather than the band for most of the show. My only criticism of these guys was the lack of improvisation. They just kept doing the same few little steps over and over without much flair.

A leaflet that I snagged on the way out, advertising the show.

I was determined to get my money out of the experience, so I stayed until the band was finished. While I'm not a big fan of the genre, I have to admit that the guys had energy. One guy playing a cello (?, I'm not a large stringed instruments expert) raised it to his hip to play it like a guitar, revealing the bright red and orange flames painted all over it.

After the show, when the crowds started to thin out, I noticed that there were some tables with CDs and t-shirts that the bands were selling. One shirt was funny enough that I picked one up. It has a skull with crossed swords on the front, and across the chest it reads "rockabilly samurai" and "far east rebels rule". The back has several things going on, the best being the Japanese flag emblazoned directly next to the confederate flag, in an unholy and confusing alliance that I'm sure is the first of its kind.

After the show was finished, this pompadoured DJ started up, playing strange hip hop versions of the 50s music we were listening to previously. This was my signal to leave.

3/9/08 Day of 1,000 Bows

The past several days at school have been devoted to the third grader's graduation ceremony. Many school days have been completely chopped in half, with the students all going to the gym to practice the ceremony after lunch. I witnessed the quite solemn and very serious way that everything was going to go down. You see, not only the soon graduating students were practicing, but nearly every human in the building came to go over their parts.

Every practice day was the same. One classroom at a time, the students would pick their chairs up and carry them with them towards the gym. A large group of teachers stood at the entrance to the building, examining the uniforms of the students. One of the more common infractions seemed to be the length of girls' skirts, but I imagine that is an issue everywhere people wear skirts. The big one, though, was hair.

'"Psychologically speaking hair symbolizes power," says Dr. Miyamoto, "and at the same time it is an expression of one's thoughts, emotions and conflicts. . . . As you may recognize, through hair, the educational system demands that students share the illusion that all Japanese are the same."' Another little quote from Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan, an interesting book that I will most likely continue to mention here and there. I don't know the exact guidelines, but the main infraction involved some of the students' outlandish hairstyles, as well as hair coloring. I found the color thing amusing. Everyone's hair is more or less the same hue, so you can easily spot a student thats out of line from a block away. It seemed like a hopeless rebellion on the part of the kids.

The teachers were enforcing the rules with a fervor that reminded me of airport security, or perhaps the entryway to a particularly fight-prone dance club. Before I entered, I spread my legs and raised my arms, waiting for an imaginary metal detector wand. No one found that particularly funny.

One of the most practiced parts of the routine was the various movements required. Everyone had to stand up at the same time, bow at the exact same time.... if you simply started at the same time but bowed at your own pace, you were in danger of coming back up at the wrong instant, ruining the "we are a bowing machine" effect. The bow itself was therefore broken into three or four steps, and a note was played on the piano as a signal to move to the next stage of back bentness. The whole thing was like a really forced version of "The Wave" at a particularly uneventful baseball game.

The receiving of the diplomas itself was especially forced. One was required to bow to the teacher's section, then proceed up to the stage. Bow to the principle and vice-principle, and yell a loud "Hai!" when one's own name was read. They then reached out and grabbed the large certificates, first with the left then right hands, arms fully outstretched. With yet another bow, they walked down the stairs and placed the paper they had just received in a large box. After another bow to the dignitary section on the opposite side of the room, they returned to their seats with hands straight down at their sides. A misstep in one of these many actions caused a teacher to run over and offer words of advice on the spot.

*******

Well on Friday, the big day finally arrived. The teachers' room was a beehive, with everyone running around and talking a bit more tensely than normal. The students who had ignored the past week's warnings about hair were brought in one by one. First a couple of the teachers had lengthy talks with them, most definitely unpleasant ones. Several got on the spot haircuts which were probably purposefully done as awfully as possible.

All the women that were 3 grade homeroom teachers, and so would be in the actual procession, were wearing kimono, which was pretty cool. Everyone else, though was dressed up nicely but not notably so. As I had already seen the exact ceremony several times at practice, it wasn't particularly exciting. Several important people got up and gave 10 minute long speeches, and then it was over. No joyous cheer at the end, either... simply another solemn procession out the door.

Afterwards, all of the parents and teachers made a long line from the doors to the school all the way to the front gate of the grounds. We clapped and said "omedeto" to the students, congratulating them for their three years of hard work. I did the obligatory picture taking and yearbook signing with several of the students, and then it was over.

*******

All the junior high schools in town had graduation on the same day, and we all got off work a bit early due to the festivities. Not wanting to waste such a lovely gift, we hopped on a train to Kiryu, a closely neighboring city. Its nice because there is plenty of action within walking distance of the train station, which is merciful because we have to shed our bikes in order to take the train.

One of the highlights was an Indian restaurant we had dinner in. I got a curry set, which came with this massive piece of naan, a soft bread.

I think that I will start to take more pictures of the restaurants, as they are one of my main joys in this country. Stay tuned.

3/5/08 Slow Times at Yamabe Junior High

Several of my second year classes, I fear, have turned into zombies. Not those lovable, violent, and brain thirsty sort either, I'm talking about the comatose, unblinking, and unmoving kind. I think it must just be because of their age, as many of the English teachers from other schools have reported the same phenomenon. The first year kids are over-hyper, the third years are confident and capable of more complicated conversation, but the second years aren't really much of either, it seems.

So the teacher likes me to ask questions about the short readings the class does. They barely react, though, to even the most patronizingly easy questions. So one question in particular was a real agonizing experience. The reading was an email that a pretend person sent to their pretend host family living in New Zealand. One line read "I hope I can help you on your farm". So my question for the students was, "What can he do to help them on their farm?". After a few minutes of blank stares, the teacher writes "He can take care of ____ on their farm" on the blackboard. Stares. The teacher starts naming examples of farm animals, one by one, hoping someone will catch the pattern. Stares, blanker than before, if it wasn't my imagination. After a bit more prodding, a girl in the back finally raises her hand. "Ghengis Khan" she said. This time, the blank look was all mine.

*****


Here's a a beer I bought out of pity for the sad little thing. At 135ml a can, a six pack fit inside the length of my hand.


I visited the Tochigi Prefectural Museum in Utsunomiya on Sunday, and I thought this little print was worth sharing. It's an advertisement for medicine, made to look like a little war against illness Godzilla style.



Here's an entertaining little Pro-Hillary video by Jack Nicholson.



Here is someone's parody/rebuttal, which is pretty funny. Enjoy.

2/29/08 The School Year's Dusk Approaches

Its been painfully gusty the past week or so. My daily bicycle commute is sort of like trying to row a sailboat against the wind.

The school year is starting to die down, with classes finishing up mid-March. For the 3 graders, though, classes are going to be finished next week, maybe on Tuesday. For me, that means I am teaching lots of "last classes". I am often supposed to give some closing comments to the students. I've mostly been telling them that I appreciated our time together, and giving them some hints for developing their English abilities in the future. I feel a bit guilty, as I don't really feel sad in the slightest. I only see each class once a week, and I still don't know most of their names. I feel like I have a good relationship with the students, but its usually at a pretty non-personal level, I think. We have fun, learn some grammar, I try to make them laugh, but after 50 or so minutes class is over and I move on to the next group.

I felt bad then. Yesterday, though, was much, much worse. I was saying my last goodbye at the end of yet another lesson, but this one was different. A couple of the students came to the front of the class and gave me some flowers and a card. I was really surprised and I thought it was very kind of them. I thanked them and put a little extra feeling into my last comments. Back, at my desk, I read the card. Inside was a fairly long, handwritten note. The student wrote their name at the bottom, but I couldn't tell you which one of those kids it was. I'm a terrible person.

The flowers never would have made it through the bike ride home, so they are currently sprucing up my desk.

Monday the students put on a ceremony for the third graders. It was much more showy than the usual long speech ridden assemblies. Curtains were pulled over every one of the windows to set the mood, and chairs were brought in: every other event I've been to, everyone just sits on the floor. In addition, the kids all had their fancy uniforms on.

I think the school uniforms deserve a bit of explanation. On usual days, the kids all wear these little tracksuits with stripes up the sides. There are three colors: gray, dark blue, and light blue, one for each grade. The colors follow a student, so the dark blue that the third graders are wearing now will soon roll back to the new first graders. A detail that I find a bit militaristic is the names. A student's last name is embroidered onto the front of their track shirt. And the front of their pants. And the backs of their shoes, as well as the front of the T-shirts that they wear under the heavier clothes. Sure, no one's clothes get lost, but what does is the sense that they are children, not soldiers or one big football team.

This ceremony was important, though, so everyone was wearing their dress uniforms. The clothes that the boys wear are particularly question-raising. "Japan's school system, established in the 1880's, took as its model the Prussian system, complete (for the boys) with black military uniforms with high collars and brass buttons. Today, even though the boys have dyed hair and wear earrings, they must continue to wear these uniforms" writes Alex Kerr, author of Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan (amazon). Wow. Say what you will, but the Japanese can keep a tradition alive like no people I have yet encountered.

Every day I walk by this painting hung beside the doorway that teachers and visitors use. Its Manet's Le Fifre, painted in 1866. I've checked it out once or twice, but I couldn't determine the significance. "Why the heck is this here?" I wondered. After reading about the uniforms, it hit me. The coat that this child soldier is wearing is just about identical to the ones in use at my school in the present day.


In case you've forgotten about the things I am daily forced to eat for lunch here, I present a reminder. Ahem, the menu today is a bowl full of noodles, with chunks of tofu and tiny bits of a meat. Half a kiwi and a tin of rice comprise the safe portion of the meal. For the main course, formless lump on a stick. My teacher said it was made of ground up fish meat and bones. Wow. "Hey, I'll trade you my fish lump for your kiwi." The cool thing was the milk. That little brown tube has chocolate stuff inside. You simply poke the sharp part through the hole in the milk box and squeeze to make chocolate milk. Delicious, but not a strong enough taste to wash out fish lump, unfortunately.



And now for something completely unrelated. Star Wars according to a 3 year old. Enjoy.