Writing introductions is a bit tedious so....just take a look at my first post if you want to know more....

....and if you get curious about the name of this World or my posts, check out the second one.

Suspicion 2 (of Tears)

I don't cry much. I used to a lot when I was really young, but maybe everyone does. I remember being in high school and thinking, "I should be crying right now," about certain things that happened, and not being able to. When I first came to Shizuoka I remember other foreigners telling me, "Japanese people cry a lot!" and I saw it happen at graduations and other things and thought, "Wow, I guess they do..." and then gradually forgot about it and just came to accept it as normal, just like everything else around me.

Yesterday was my last day at yet another jr high school. I wasn't that fond of the school itself, it was just average. I asked to go to it back when the schedule was made though b/c I've been teaching all the incoming first year kids for about 3 years now at 2 different elementary schools. I figured I'd at least be able to have fun w/them since I wouldn't have to go through all the, "we don't know you so we're scared to talk to you!" crap that always happens at a new school. It turned out that a whole lot of the 2nd and 3rd year kids remembered me from their own elementary days too. That was cool.

There was an art club at this school too. My last school didn't have one, but it was a pretty otaku saturated school so I didn't mind. I'd forgotten how fun it is to actually have a "place" though. And how surprised the kids who never interact with other ALTs are when I show up.

The kids put out a "magazine" once or twice a month. They don't actually distribute it to anyone outside of the club, but it's still really cool. Everyone does a page and then they all get copies of all of them stapled together. It's a pretty good idea since people who draw, or like manga, often want other people's drawings. They asked me to do a guest page this month since I was leaving....

Just like every other school, I had to make a quick speech on the morning of my last day. Just like every other time I got through the English part of it with a big fake, "I know you can't understand me," smile. And then I started in on the Japanese, and for the first time I noticed what a teacher once told me, my voice changes. Like, a lot. I sound like a completely different person. And as I was contemplating this, I caught the eye of the track team captain (one of my favorite 3rd years) and had to look away really fast. Only to be caught in the gaze of one 1st year student after another. Apparently it's harder when you really know the people you're saying goodbye to. Any normal person would have had tears in their eyes (or possibly rolling down their face) along with the second voice change I noticed.

As if that wasn't enough, the last day at the art club was like a big party. I brought them presents from Super コミ, we complied the magazine, took pictures, and I got tons of letters and presents from them too. Finally, at 6:30, nearly 2 hours after I'm "supposed" to go home, we finished up and the 7 second year girls and 2 third year girls waited for me to get all my stuff from the teachers' room. Half of them should have gone out the back gate to go home, but they all walked to the front one with me anyway. It was raining. I'm sure we made a strange site, 10 girls with umbrellas walking ridiculously slow. We split up there and the remaining 5 went to the corner that leads out of the neighborhood with me. The last 3 second years went home there and I was left with the 2 oldest girls, also the president and vp of the club. They decided to walk me all the way to the bus stop, at least another 10 minutes away. About 5 meters from the stop we saw the bus coming and they started to sound panicky. It's a busy street so I said I'd wait for the next one, figuring it'd be about 5 of 10 minutes. Enough time to say goodbye anyway. But as we stepped under the tiny roof and I put my umbrella down the next bus appeared. I couldn't really justify waving it on when I was obviously standing there waiting for it so I hugged them both quickly and jumped on. When I looked back the president had one hand pressed over her mouth and her face was red. The vp had dropped her umbrella and was waving with one hand and rubbing her eyes with the other. I shouted (in a slightly too forceful voice) "Don't cry! We'll see each other again!" and stood at the door and waved as the bus drove off. And then I sat down and didn't cry.

I need to redo my site. I keep saying that, but it's not happening for some reason....I also need to make a list of the post titles I've used. It's getting to be a bit less interesting and a bit more of a pain scrolling through them every time to make sure I don't reuse one. I'm thinking I should make the whole thing my own art. Avatar, background, banner, all of it. It's almost like it's unfair to keep using someone else's at this point.

The One Who Changed The World

I like to collect quotes, not inspirational junk usually, just bits of songs, something a character said that I could identify with, stuff like that. But once in a while I like a famous one.
There are two ways to look at life, as if nothing is a miracle, or as if everything is. -Albert Einstein

I'd say I definitely get through life on the first half of that. People are often disappointed when the ask me, "What surprised you the most when you first came to Japan?" I can never give them a straight answer. Recently I've started giving an honest one sometimes - not in class of course, there it's just "oh, well, you have to change your shoes inside the school!" or some other similar lie they're happy to hear - but now that I can express myself better I've tried to explain to some of my friends that I wasn't surprised by anything. Not because I knew about everything that I would encounter beforehand or anything, just because I don't get surprised by stuff. I just accept it. What is, is. Of course I might not like some things, I might want (or try) to change some things, but the simple fact that they exist doesn't phase me.

I guess I'm kinda like Oz-kun here. "Oh, my dad tried to kill me and when I woke up it was 10 years in the future. Oh well, that's life, guess I'll help out this chick who keeps turning into a giant rabbit and attacking people since she's hanging around me." No, "What the hell happened to me??" or "Why the hell does a rabbit use a scythe?!?" Just, "That's life. Let's get on with it." Makes things easier on everyone.

I work with a teacher right now who's amazingly smart. I totally love her, and being at current my school is easier because of her. For some reason she belongs to the second school of thought in Einstein's quote. It seems incongruous with the way a smart person should be, but it just makes me like her more. Maybe because the "everything" she finds miraculous isn't the things that people usually get excited over. Me eating an apple without cutting it, for example. Sooooo tired of that one.....

No, the things she finds interesting, while I would never even begin to want to think about them on my own.......for some reason when she talks about them I start to see the miracle in them too. Like a story about a deaf and blind man whose mother developed a whole new system of braille just for him using hand holding. Now, he's a university professor. Or a book about how to sew bags with intricate designs to match your kimono. Thinking about it after the fact I'll realize I don't care a bit about that stuff. Yet for some reason while she's telling me about it I do. And not in a fake way.

Recently she's been lending me books she gets from the library. Sewing books, cookbooks, stuff my mom would like, not me. Definitely not me. I look at them when I'm bored at school. Which is pretty often. I ended up photocopying a bunch of recipes this week. I can't cook the stuff of course, and I only really have one person who'll occasionally cook for me, but I wanted them anyway. Weird....

Empty Dialogue

Recently one of my jr. high 1st years can't stop shouting, "This is it!" whenever he sees me. I thought he was actually trying to say something the first two or three times (just goes to show you how much I don't care about the rest of the world....) but eventually realized it was just some English he heard somewhere and was repeating. Kind of like the rash of elementary school kids who went around chanting, "Yes we can!" during the last presidential election.

It finally clicked in my head what the kid was talking about when I walked by a display outside a book/DVD store. While I'm not a fan of the office of the president, and kind of hate politics in general, I have to say I'm slightly insulted that Obama's catchphrase has been so quickly erased from the minds of Japanese children. To be replaced by Michael Jackson.

Last Thursday the kids went out to collect aluminum cans to sell to get money to buy flowers for graduation. The (super cute) nurse and I went out to take pictures of them as they came back all loaded down with bags of beer and coke cans from the neighborhood houses. On his way out of the school gate the same kid passed by us and shouted...guess what?

Yep.
"This is it!"
...and looked at me like he had just done some thing amazingly cool and I should be really happy about it.
The nurse blinked a few times and looked at me like, 'What's that all about?' and I sighed and yelled after the kid,
"Do you understand what you're saying?" in Japanese.
"No!" (also Japanese) he answered. And kept on walking.

*sigh*
No. Of course not.
I was right. "Yes we can!" all over again.

The nurse turned to me and asked, "So....what does it mean?" and I said, "Well....um...it means....." and realized, 'shit! it can mean like 8 million different things depending on the context!' Of course, I have no idea what the context is since I don't even know if "This is it" is the title of the dead King of Pop's song, or just his DVD. (The only time I knew anything about Michael Jackson was in 6th grade when he had that video where all the people's faces morphed into each other's. And that was a big secret since everyone thought I was way too cool for stuff other people like. I can't remember the name of the song, or the tune, just the trippy looking people melting from one to the next.) I couldn't have explained "This is it" in English, let alone Japanese.

Stupid, ambiguous language.

Countdown to the End 3 (Blind Light, Deaf Beat)

Nothing to do on a Friday afternoon...

I'm sitting in the computer lab at my school right now. The kids are supposed to be practicing typing for some speed test that they'll take at some unknown time. Most of them are just playing around on the internet. Like me. They keep marvelling at my speed, but thinking back, when I was their age (15?) I couldn't type with more than two fingers. Nor did I care to. I just wrote my reports by hand and passed them off to my mom at two am the night before they were due. She was up anyway. It was just before I went off to college that she made me take a typing course. She said, "What are you gonna do if your roommate's mean? I may have typed all Suse's papers when we were in college, but that doesn't mean some stranger's gonna do it for you!"

I think my freshman roommate was pretty nice. She kinda bored me though so I can't remember. Either way, I guess I'm glad I learned to type....

I like the computer lab. There's heat, but no teachers. There's kids, but no noise. Well, that's not true...I can hear the basketball and volleyball teams practicing in the gym upstairs. The balls bouncing off the floor over and over, their shoes squeaking at unexpected times, but right here next to me Sho**-chan and her friend aren't saying a word. My typing is probably the loudest thing in here besides the heat and the buzz of flourescent lights.

"...I'll keep my helmet on just in case my head caves in..."

Goodbye, Halcyon Days

Winter vacation's over. And that means back to teaching jr. high kids for me.

The school I got actually isn't that bad, but.....still not like elementary. I was telling a friend of mine tonight that I thought the kids there were all pretty nice, & he said, "Then that's all you need." And I thought, um...no, it's not. The kids are never really a problem. Sure there were a few that I really didn't like at 2 of the 4 schools I was stuck at, but for the most part, even the ones I wasn't fond of I didn't mind. I like kids. Obviously, I wouldn't have been working with them this long if I didn't. It's the adults that make me crazy. It always has been. No matter where I was living. I've never had patience for adults. They always over complicate things with their confusion. I don't mind the ones at this school so much for some reason though. Possibly because of my "New Year's Resolution", or possibly b/c I remembered something about myself over break. Although, one of those was really caused by the other anyway...

Winter vacation was pretty awesome now that I think about it. Besides "Mitchiko E Hatchin" I watched a ton of Naruto, read all of Kuroshitsuji, started reading Tegami Bachi, & got caught up on all the stuff I normally read & watch that had fallen behind since the last few weeks before break were too stressful for me to think about them. It reminded me of the spring and winter vacations of the few years before I came to Japan. Nobody to take care of. Nothing to worry about. Nowhere I was needed. Watching Naruto made me want to watch it all from the beginning again. For like, the 8th time. It made me even more connected to my "Kakashi-side" again too. Not to say that my "Hayato-side" is lessening or anything, but he is a bit of a kid after all.

I'm still finding strange gaps in my language patterns. It's possible that they were always there & it's not even related to the English/Japanese thing. In fact, it's quite likely that's the case. While I'm good at spinning words around, I'm absolutely terrible at actually saying anything. And probably it's always been that way.

...and you're walking away, and I will drown in the fear...