Here's to You.

In Japan, any individual's absence from work, when it is not work-related, requires some sort of apology to the group. If one travels, for example, one should (read: must) bring back "omiyage," loosely translated as souvenirs, for those at the work place. In other cases, an announcement of what one was doing and throwing in a short "I'm sorry I've been gone lately" at the morning meeting seems to suffice.

Earlier last week, the school nurse's father died. She disappeared from school in the middle of the day, and the whispered explanation of her absence spread through the staffroom like a plague. Only the students were immune to it, not being privileged enough to hear such personal information. She was gone for several days, only reappearing today.

With puffy eyes and a tired demeanor, Sato-sensei apologized for her absence. She spoke for a few minutes, explaining her father's prolonged illness and the reason for her sudden disappearance in the midst of a school week. During the 2 minutes that she spoke, I thought of how I, as a 6th grader, burst into tears when a fellow student made a generic jest about my grandmother - both of mine, unbeknownst to my classmate, had died within the 3 days prior. I would not have had the strength then to stand up in front of my peers and state, calmly and coolly, that my mother's mother had been in a coma for a week or two due to a sudden stroke, or that my father's mother had been on a slow decline from disease for 5 years, a subject so taboo that I was not even aware of it until her condition had her knocking on Death's door. I don't know that I would have the ability to do so even now. I greatly admire Sato-sensei's strength.

So, here's to you, Sato-sensei.
Here's to you, her father, who has now been released from a 3-year struggle.
And here's to you, Anne and Mary, who passed away 13 years ago this week.

Ol' Man Winter

The first cold snap surprised everyone in Nitta. Teachers and students like rushed through the cold halls, repeating the mantra of the day: "It's cold! It's cold!" I, too, took to saying it, or agreeing vehemently with it when I heard it from others. Saito-sensei, one of my neighbors in the staffroom, found my dislike of the cold amusing. "Winter is coming," he responded in Japanese every time the word "cold" escaped my lips. I, too, had a stock response: "Don't say nasty things" in Japanese, paired with an icy glare.

For a while, the warm weather returned, and we could at least pretend that fall was going to last a while longer. Saito-sensei took to informing me of the season every day when I arrived, saying things like, "Today's winter, but tomorrow will be autumn." Friday, however, he informed me that we would be seeing nothing but winter from now on, laughing at my response of a groan.

It's not that I hate the cold; I hate the constant, inescapable nature of the cold here. Due to the lack of insulation in Japanese buildings and the expense of running the heaters, one never really feels warm. Those moments when one does get warm are soon followed by extreme cold - taking a bath is wonderful until one has to leave the bath water and stand, dripping wet, in the cold air of the apartment. It almost makes the moments of warmth not worth the shock of cold afterward.

At school, the individual classrooms are heated with kerosene - I find myself having a constant headache throughout the day from the fumes. Worse are the unheated hallways, though, whose cold is so intense that teachers often wear an extra jacket when leaving the staffroom.

Gunma also lays claim to a strong, fierce wind that makes traveling difficult for those of us without cars. I'm not the only one who has noticed that, often, it is quicker to walk than it is to attempt biking; walking is, at the very least, easier.

Of course, winter has its highlights. The onsen, or hot springs, are heated such that being half exposed to the cold is the perfect balance for those who are soaking. Winter fruits are delicious and sweet - manderine oranges, strawberries, and persimmons. The kotatsu, one of my favorite ways of staying warm, plays a prominent winter role. I've been told that the stereotypical image of winter is of huddling at the kotatsu, drinking green tea and eating mandarine oranges while a cat lies curled up at one's feet, a scene I can (and do) recreate on a regular basis.


Having survived one winter here, I feel better prepared to face the cold. In the end, though, I have to admit that this preparedness is also somewhat of a disservice; unlike last year, the hope of it not being able to get worse is instead replaced with the solid knowledge of just how bad it can (and will) get. In short, send me your warmest thoughts the next few months!

Getting Dressed (and What It Does)

AKA: Leslie Can Walk and Think at the Same Time!

I like to walk to the places near my house - to school, to the grocery store, to the nearby mall. It takes longer, but there's something relaxing in the slowness of it. The benefits are numerous, but now isn't the time or place to go into my exercise-and-general-wellness plan, so I won't. I will say instead that spending an hour or so walking every day gives me a lot of time to think.

As of late, I've been thinking about clothes. It's recently become cold, so I've retired my summer wardrobe and have been rearranging my closet to best fit my winter wear and trying to figure out what is missing before it gets much colder. In doing so, I realized just how much I've changed since I arrived here over a year ago.

Fashion was my enemy. Anyone who has seen "Mean Girls" may understand my dislike for fashionistas. (Imagine the Plastics being, not a group of 3 girls, but 90% of the school population.) I ran from the idea of being fashionable, which to me amounted to spending insane amounts of money on clothing only to find it out of style in a month. After going to a school for 6 years which required a uniform, I found myself at college with little more than t-shirts and jeans to wear. By the time I left WashU, I had shed my dislike for skirts and anything even slightly feminine, and even had a few cute outfits I wore entirely too often.

As soon as I arrived in Japan, however, I realized that I was playing a whole new game and on a completely different field. In the year I've been here, I've become immune to femininity, and my idea of what colors match has drastically changed. I've experimented with clothing in a way with which I never felt comfortable before, as I stand out no matter what I wear. It's been an interesting learning experience.

The result is that I no longer think of clothing like a checklist of things I need in which to be appropriately attired, as though there were a sign on my door similar to those at gas stations, saying, "No shirt, no shoes, no pants, no leaving!" Instead, clothing is like music, or a composition, or spices for cooking - getting dressed involves combining various parts into a cohesive, attractive whole. I no longer find myself thinking, "How long do I need to wait before I wear this outfit again?" ("How long until I have lemon-pepper chicken again?"*) I don't have set outfits anymore; I have, instead, the pieces to a self-expression puzzle.

My mom once told me the story of her meeting my godmother, Del Rae. A group of doctors and their significant others were on a skiing trip in Colorado, and my mom felt out of place among the women who had spent large sums of money on lavish, Southwestern wardrobes. Del Rae, a true Southwestern woman, offered to help my mom with her outfits. "All she did," my mom said, "was take what I had and rearrange it, adding a Southwestern embellishment here and there, but that in and of itself was enough. I was the best dressed there."

The moral of the story - "it's not what you have, but how you use it" - is something I've understood in many aspects of my life. It's just taken me this long to realize what it means for clothing, as well as what it doesn't mean. Being fashionable doesn't mean being rich and vapid; it means expressing oneself in a way everyone can see and comprehend. I must say that I rather like the change in connotation.



*I feel obligated to note that my roommate, hannah, would say that it is never too soon to have lemon-pepper chicken. (And, for anyone who wonders why I still refer to hannah as "my roommate" though we live in different countries, I offer you this bastardized Holmes quote: "To Leslie, she is always 'the roommate.' I have seldom heard her mention her under any other name.")

The Election as Seen from Japan

AKA: A few thoughts on a historic day.

I sat down for lunch in the staffroom and refreshed the BBC news page on the election - a map showing the results, both popular and electoral, of the voting as the news came in. As I ate, I stared at the map. So, I was watching as the results from California, Oregon, and Washington state pushed Obama over the 270 mark and fully into the Winner's Circle.

Being a Democrat and a supporter of Obama, I eagerly looked around for someone with whom I could share my joy. I squealed and bounced on the balls of my feet. I felt like screaming, running laps around the school and yelling "Obama won!" at the top of my lungs. When the art teacher came in to the staffroom, she took one look at me and said, "Did something happen?"
"Obama!!" I said. She gave me a strange look.
"He won! Obama won!" I was near squealing at this point.
"Oooh, so Obama won..." she said, almost more to herself than to me, continuing to walk to her desk.

Another teacher walked in - one of my English teachers. "Obama won, Obama won!!" I said, actually jumping up and down at this point. My excitement was beginning to draw attention. Murmurs of "what happened?" circulated the room. "Obama won," someone said in Japanese. "Oooh," the murmurers responded as they went back to their lunches, to work, to whatever was waiting them on their desks.

Don't you see, I wanted to say, that this is a historic day? That, no matter who you follow or want to be elected, it's amazing to be alive on the day when a minority figure not only wins the White House, but wins it by a landslide?

The Japanese don't have a say in the election of the Prime Minister. While the news programs note such events, the general populace cares little. On top of this, the Prime Minister rarely makes it through a full term - he does something that angers either his party or some other group of politicians and steps down as an apology. (I sometimes wonder if our system could maybe use a little of this apologizing.) In short, they don't understand how an election of one person over another can truly change a country like the United States, nor do they understand the personal involvement many Americans have with our elections, and especially this one.

I channeled my energy into teaching my last class of the day, which helped, but I find myself excited to end my day in this uncaring atmosphere and rejoice fully at home. Here, I see the shades of what America could be - politics being the barest of acknowledgment of a thing well beyond an individual's power or say. We're already fairly far down that road. Let's not only take these next four years to change our nation, but to change ourselves as well. I, for one, am scared by the blank face of apathy.


Edit: midnight, 6th November

The news has been constantly reporting on Obama's win, to the point that some of my acquaintances are "getting tired of seeing his face." (They say it with a smile, so I allow them the comment.) All of Japan may know about the election results, but I think only those in the city of Obama, Japan are celebrating quite as much as most Americans are. A friend proposed visiting Obama on Inauguration day, and, while her comment may have been tongue-in-cheek, I'm already looking into making reservations.

Ye Aforementioned Video

Sorry to overload on posts yesterday, for those of you who get the digest version. I wouldn't have read all those entries had they arrived in my inbox, so thanks to those of you who did. :D

It took a couple of hours to upload the video, but here it is for your viewing pleasure: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=m3IGKQaDDQk
This is the performance I mentioned in my Chorus Competition post. I'm actually pretty impressed with the video's sound quality, considering I took it with my Canon SD600 (aka - not a video camera). So...enjoy!

How Japan is Green

And How We Can All Be Green, Too

I've recently fallen in love with a website: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ (more specifically, with its sub-site, http://www.re-nest.com/). Aside from having lots of tips for living in small spaces that you may or may not own, it has an entire section (aka: re-nest.com) devoted to do-it-yourself projects and to being as green as possible without crossing the line into insanity. It also features a lot of green/diy options that don't look as if they were done by 3rd graders in science class - it can be quite the accomplishment.

Living in Japan has opened my eyes to a lot of realistic green options I've been taking for granted. It's rare, for example, for a house to have a full-sized oven, a dryer, or a dishwasher. Having "made due" with a toaster oven, line drying, and hand-washing for a year now has made me realize just how well I can function without the larger, energy-wasting versions.

Recycling is huge here. This is largely due to training in schools and heavy fines for those who throw away things inappropriately. While no one I have spoken to fully knows the system for separating out burnable and non-burnable trash (the requirements are very strict), everyone knows to recycle cans, plastic bottles, and glass. On top of this, many drinks come in paper cartons - these, too, are recycled. Recycling can be picked up or can be taken to the grocery stores for those of us who, like myself, don't produce enough to make taking the recycling out for pick up worthwhile. Indeed, it is generally easier to find a place to recycle a can or bottle than it is to find a trash can.

There are rarely paper towels in bathrooms - while some have air-dryers, many do not. Instead, most people carry a handkerchief or a handkerchief-sized towel for drying their hands. This is a general-use towel, too; students use them as drop cloths for their school lunches, for example.

I work in a middle and elementary school, and I'm impressed with the efforts made in these two places as well. Paper that has been printed on one side (but is still good for further use) is collected and reused for inner-office memos and other prints that often build up in an office setting. After that use, they're recycled. Machines in the copy room are unplugged at the end of the day; many are left turned off when not being used. Teachers leave a coffee mug at the school for use with drinks, and most teachers take a policy of washing their mug at the end of the day and rinsing quickly between uses rather than between washing fully after each use. Lunch comes with a carton of milk every day, and these are rinsed in a single bucket of water in each classroom rather than with gallons of water from the tap. Even the design of the school is such that it will save power - the classrooms are built with south-facing windows so as to get as much light (and heat, for winter) as possible during the day - the lights are turned off regularly when a class isn't in session, and even during breaks.

Saving energy at home is an impressive feat as well. Water heaters are connected to a panel in the kitchen which can easily adjust the temperature of the water, as well as turn the heater off when hot water isn't needed. Few houses come with central air; in fact, many function with one or two A/C units in the entire house, and these are run at selective times, if not on a timer. In winter, space heaters and kerosene heaters come into play, also being used at selective times. I'll only mention the kotatsu by name, and encourage anyone who's reading to look it up on Google - it's an amazing invention for winter and quite a power conserver.

Of course, it's rare that one thinks of Japan without thinking of the public transportation options. Due to expense, I decided against getting a car while here, and have been traveling on bike and by train instead - I've found it to not be as limiting as I had originally feared. While it's a pain during excessively cold, excessively hot, or rainy weather, it's nevertheless amazing to me that the idea of biking to the nearest mall (45 minutes one way) doesn't overly phase me anymore.

Not to say the Japanese are perfect by any means - for example, they are obsessed with packaging in a way that is frightening, women flush the toilet multiple times rather than allowing others to hear them pee, and good insulation seems to be a fancy dream. Still, they accept so many green practices as daily life that I can't help but hope that America will soon follow suit after their examples. For my part, I hope to maintain my green training when I return to the States next year. After a year of "making due" with options that at times are less convenient but are always exponentially friendlier to the earth, I've clearly come to see just how do-able these options are.

Chorus Contest v2.0

AKA: Practice Makes Perfect

It's that time of the year again - the Chorus Contest! You may or may not remember it from last year, so here's the short version: each of the homerooms compete against the other homerooms in their grade in a singing contest. They sing two songs - one that the entire grade sings, one that each homeroom picks for itself. Each homeroom picks a student to conduct and a student to play the piano accompaniment; the competition completely relies on the students. The teachers judge each performance and the winners are announced at the end of the competition.

So ... this glorious event happened yesterday.

This year, as far as the official part of the contest is concerned, wasn't very different from last year. The conductors were a little more reserved in their conducting, which was sad - I rather enjoyed the flamboyant Maestros from last year. The performances were also a little disappointing as far as ability was concerned - many of the pieces seemed unbalanced, in that the boys were not informed that their voices would carry much more easily than the girls', making the bass-lines much too prominent.
Or maybe I'm just more critical this year than I was last year; who knows!

Outside of the official competition, however, there was much more unofficial activity. There was a handbell performance, a jazz band performance, a percussion band performance, an a cappella performance, a gymnastics routine, a rock band performance which featured the Vice Principal on rhythm guitar, a skit, a piano duet featuring a third year student (9th grader) and a teacher wearing a student uniform, a PTA chorus rendition of Angela Aki's "Letter," a dance done by the extracurricular music class, and a brass band performance of two popular songs which involved teachers dancing. Pretty chock full of stuff!

I was involved in the a cappella performance (3 people, including myself, singing "Amazing Grace" - I had the melody, which was fun) and the teacher's dance for the brass band (I was dancing to the Ponyo theme song). It was nice to be selected for things and to be included in this way.

However...

We never had a dress rehearsal. The a cappella group never practiced the whole song together. The Ponyo dance didn't ever practice, and only one person dancing knew what the order for the dance was. Other performances, too, reflected a general lack of practice; only the PTA seemed to be on top of their game.

The kids had fun, which was the important part; that being said, the whole thing, as a performance, was very sloppy. Were it just a performance for the students, I wouldn't mind, but here were many relatives and other visitors who had come to watch. I hated that what they saw reflected so poorly, in general, on our school. Still, lack of preparation (and my severe anal-retentive streak) aside, it was a fun occasion.

Of all of the songs, I took only one video, and it happened to be my favorite performance and what won first place for the 3rd year homeroom that performed it. I think I will try putting it up on YouTube so y'all can get a feel for what the students do; more on this in the near future. :)