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.
- Created By Sailor Nevar
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....
Don't Look Back
Somehow, maybe it's just the ingrained routine of childhood, but I always get the feeling that the year begins in September. It's not the beginning of the year. It's not even the beginning of the school year in Japan. But it's just one of those things I can't shake. Things end in August and begin in September. You go back to school and feel like somebody new because something happened over the summer. Or because something different is happening at school. You go back and think you're smarter. You've grown up. Or something like that...
A lot of stuff I've been into for a while now is ending soon. "Shangri-la", "Canaan", "07-Ghost" "Tsubasa" (been waiting on that one for a LONG time...) It's disappointing but what can you do? "Kobato" starts next week so that's pretty awesome. Also, I've kind of become obsessed with "Pandora Hearts" and "Bakuman" and both of those look like they'll continue for a while.
At first I thought I'd really love Bakuman b/c it's about writing manga. A manga about manga. Like my 'play within a play' from so many years ago. (That was a big success....) Like my two favorite TV shows, about making TV shows. But as I read it there were so many things that made me balk about the characters personalities, the way things are done, the choices people made. It was anger inducing at times. But in the end, reading it just makes me want to draw even more. I can't really explain it, but it's made me realize things that might be useful.
I heard about Pandora Hearts, or rather, I saw it, advertised in Animate so many times that I finally downloaded it b/c I was bored. When I realized it had Alice in Wonderland themes I thought it'd be cool, at least design-wise, but it's the characters that I really love. I really can't decide on a favorite, or which one I'm most like from the main three. After catching up to the anime I had to get the manga too so I could get ahead in the story. I thought. And that's what sunk me. The clean simplicity of the characters (the way they're drawn that is) and the way the author's feelings for them come through is something I haven't seen in a while. I've been reading too much mainstream stuff I think...
When things change it's like a breath of fresh air. To speak in ridiculous cliche. You can breathe more easily, think more clearly, find the right path to follow more decisively. Suddenly, things make sense.
"Never look away - not from nightmares or the truth."
End
