My Other Career As A Model

Today didn’t start off all that well. I slept in, getting up only twenty minutes before I had to teach a class. Considering that it takes ten minutes to actually get to the school, I had a full 10 minutes to shower,  get dressed, eat, brush teeth and put on makeup.

Oh, yes. I wear makeup to school every day. Just like I wore makeup to work every day when I worked in finance. I’m not one of those people that looks pretty much the same whether I’m wearing makeup or not. I look hella better with it on. Not loads, just a bit of eyeliner, some pale eyeshadow and mascara, but it makes a world of difference. I honestly believe that when you look good people take you more seriously and give you more respect. Like if you’ve put the effort in, other people will too. Even if those people are three years old. 

So today was the first day (well, in a while) that I arrived looking a bit… ratty. Bare face, hair sticking up, slightly crumpled top, a loose thread in my jeans… ratty. 

It turned out that all my rushing was for nowt though. Yesterday (Sunday) was the local elementary school’s concert, so today was a day off for the kids. None of my first class showed up. 

I was just chilling in my room, checking out the new games and stuff for February (hearts all over the shop I tells you) when in marches the owner of the school, armed with three 9-year-old girls and a hefty Nik*n DSLR. She asks me to sit down. She starts into a five minute monologue to the kids, then starts taking pictures. Of us. Me and the kids. No explanation, no directions, nothing. 

This goes on for a few minutes before she gets frustrated at my shoddy modelling skills and my poor rapport with the kids who had never seen me before in their short Japanese lives. Or maybe they had, from a suitable staring distance, but I’d never seen them before. She starts trying to get me to hug the kids, while showing them a picture book and asking them questions WAAAAY beyond their ability level. Them looking at me in confusion. Me grinning like a deranged freak. With sticky-up hair. Eventually she gives up and marches out. 

I found her later and asked what it was all about. Apparently, she was taking pictures for the school’s advertisements. To be used in newspapers, magazines, leaflets, maybe a billboard. 

WHAAT? I mean, I know this is Japan. I know the culture is different. I know that you’re not supposed to question your money-giver – but seriously. This is the first time I’ve really felt like shouting “This would NEVER happen where I come from!!” What the hell would have happened if I hadn’t asked? My face would have ended up on billboards around the area, surrounded by my crazy hair and unprofessional clothes, without my permission or knowledge. 

I was PISSED OFF. In a normal (Western) workplace, your boss would – 

1. Ask you if you minded taking part in an advertising campaign.

2. Explain what it involved and answered any questions.

3. Warned you of when it would be taking place and

4. PAY YOU!!

Ok, I don’t really mind whoring myself out to the Japanese public for the sake of the school. I don’t even expect to get paid. But I would like her to tell me what’s going on before she starts shoving her giant lens in my face and taking pictures! And come on girls, is it too much to ask to be given a day’s warning so you can wash your hair and iron a shirt? Really? Is the messy bleary gaijin look what she wants on her school’s ads? 

God damn. I’m annoyed. 

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Exposed

I just found the site “Stuff White People Like“. 

Number 31 – Snowboarding

Number 42 – Sushi

Number 58 – Japan

Numer 71 – Being the only white person around

Number 115 – Promising to learn a new language

Number 120 – Taking a year off

Even aside from the other stuff – sea salt, tea, yoga, not having a tv, grammar – I have never felt so transparent.

Although, I guess it’s just my culture. 

Dammit.

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Home

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve done any regular posting, but honestly, it’s been a little tough around here the past while. It’s now been 15 days since I came back to Japan. I went back home for Christmas/New Year and stayed 3 weeks to make the exorbitant cost of the flights justifiable. 

The time at home was a blur. Apart from Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, there wasn’t a single day that I didn’t have two or more appointments. By appointments, I mean things to do. With other people. Like lie on their couch and eat cheese. 

After five months in Japan, it was strange to be back. Little things, like being able to understand menus (a great thing), tv (not such a good thing) and overheard conversations (definitely not a good thing) were odd at first. I found the level of English I had to listen to and speak on a daily basis to be slightly overwhelming. It took about a week to get back into the swing of normal conversation. 

Not that much of the conversation was normal. Everyone just wanted to know about Japan and I found myself erasing all the bad things and raving about the good things. I told the same stories over and over until I bored myself. Nobody wants to know about the loneliness, or the spates of boredom, or the wondering why the hell I ever came to this godforsaken country. All these things pass though, and at the end of it, I do like being here. So I talked about that. 

There were things I had forgotten that I missed. Just the general, everyday banter you have with strangers. Like, for example, I was in a garage, buying gas and a coffee with a friend, talking about these boots I had bought in Japan. Opinion at home was mixed, to say the least. I was telling him this as we were waiting for the girl at the counter to stop applying lip gloss and take our money. He said he wasn’t sure about the boots. The girl at the counter said “Don’t mind them, I think they’re deadly”. (“Deadly” means brilliant, by the way.) I was stunned. A perfect stranger, butting into our conversation! An employee, stepping out of her employee role and offering an opinion! Wooo–hoooooo! In Japan, it’s hard to get the local 7-11 girls to recommend a brand of canned coffee. I go there every freaking day!

Other things too, like not being the chubbiest, scruffiest woman within a two-town radius. I went to visit a friend who has just moved into a new apartment in a swish building. In the lobby, there was a woman in her pyjamas. She was wearing a coat mind you, because of the cold, and carrying a shopping bag. IN HER PYJAMAS! I nearly kissed her. I probably would have, except I was afraid of getting knifed. 

And then, there were things I didn’t miss. Like public transport – getting anywhere was an exercise in frustration and disappointment. Not to mention the recession. Ah yes, The Recession. It will certainly be the topic of another post, but for now I’ll just say that before I went home the global recession was something of a myth. I read about it in online newspapers and I heard about it from family but I hadn’t seen it for myself. Going home assured me that it was actually, depressingly, real. 

It made me grateful. Although I’m worried for friends and family, and for my country, and the world at large, I’m grateful that I have a job. It might be exhausting at times, but really, I have it easy. I get paid a wage that rises by the day due to currency fluctuation (I still calculate my wage in my home currency) and my living costs are low. Mostly though, I’m grateful that I was born into a language and an economy that has made it possible for me to be able to be welcomed to Japan, with enough money to be able to fly across the world for a few weeks for the holidays. 

Altogether, I had a good time at home. It was tough to come back. There were tears at the airport and tears on the plane. But then, I arrived back into the bosom of Japanese efficiency and helpfulness, was guided politely from the gate to a coach to my town where I was picked up by my boss and driven home. 

And you know, I was glad to be back. 

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Yes They Can

Photograph: Graham Whitby Boot/Allstar

Almost 24 hours ago I was crouched in front of this very computer to watch The Inauguration. Even though there have been other inaugurations, this one deserves capitalisation.

I should say now, I’m not American. This you might have inferred from the lack of the letter “z” in this blog so far (though the spellchecker constantly tries to correct me). Last night however, was the third time in my life that I almost wished I was. (The second was during Obama’s victory speech, the first was some years ago on a beach in San Diego. Tequila was involved. In the latter, not the former.)

Today, I taught five classes. One was made up of 4- and 5-year-olds and one had a group of exceptionally quiet girls, but in the other three I was greeted by Japanese children leaping around the classroom shouting “Yes we can!! Yes we can!!” on repeat. They learned the words “inauguration”, “speech” and also, “assassination”. 

Obviously, that last word was not part of the lesson plan. In fact, none of those words were, but the a word came up in response to a group of 7-year-old boys miming the assassination of “Keneji“, a chair playing the role of the Book Depository. 

That this event has permeated the minds of school children in a small town in the Japanese countryside is some indicator of its importance. It was something to follow in the media, to discuss and to explain to the children. 

I, for one, will remember where I was when a black man took “a most sacred oath”. I will tell my children about it. 

And for once,  I hope, really hope, that those kids will forget a word I taught them. 

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Aaaand… I’m back

In fact, I’ve been back for ten days or so. Jet-lag hit me like a brick to the face though, so blog posts have been interrupted by sleeping. 

Normal service will resume tomorrow.

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Apologies

Presumably any readers I might have had have jumped ship by now. 

My humblest apologies, I’m a bad bad blogger. 

Excuse? I’ve been home for Christmas. All of a sudden I have a social life that does not involve the internet and it’s been seriously eating into my computer-love time. 

I’ll be spending the next couple of days buying my computer chocolates and serenading it from a balcony. Plus travelling back to Japan. 

Updates will follow. 

I promise. 

To placate the angry mob I’ll leave you with a cute photo. Don’t eat it all at once. 

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Tales Of The Classroom

As previously mentioned, I teach English in a small after-school place in rural Japan. 

I’ve been there 3 months now and the fun just never stops. Not really. It’s often not fun. It’s often hard, tiring, boring and annoying. The lesson plans are pretty repetitive, the kids are boisterous and I get no breaks between classes. 

However, at this point, I’ve started to bond with the kids a bit. It’s tough, considering I teach well over 100 different kids. In fact, there are two sets of over-100-kids. I have one set and the other teacher has the other. Every two months we switch. Last time, it didn’t make any difference to me, I didn’t know any of the kids anyway. This time (1 December was the switch date), it was hard. I’ve been busting my butt to learn all their names and it’s so damn hard. I mean, for one – they’re Japanese. 

Not to say that “all Japanese look the same” or anything, but they kind of do. They all have straight dark brown hair and brown eyes. Every single one of them is ethnically Japanese. In many countries there would be variations in skin, hair and eye colour. Not here. Also, I don’t recognise the names. If they were called John, James, Sarah and Claire, it wouldn’t be so bad. 

Here, not only do I not recognise which names are boys’ and which are girls’, a lot of the names are the same, or very similar (in one class I have a Tatsuma, a Tatsuya and a Takuma – there’s a Takuya in another class). It’s an exercise in frustration to try to address them by name. 

Anyway, now and then funny things do happen. This week – 

1. In one class, I have six girls and one boy. He’s a slightly weird little kid (maybe 6 or 7) who refuses to sit (kneel) like all the other kids in the circle. He turns around to face the other way, mashes his face into the carpet and points his bum at me. His skinny little bum. It’s weird. Anyway, the other day while breathing in carpet fluff, he found a hair on the rug. A long, blond hair. Mine. He showed it to me and the class (who got all excited about it – it’s not like they don’t see blond hairs on my head every damn week). I apologised and told him to put it in the bin. He put it in his pocket. Then resumed his butt-pointing. 

2. On Wednesdays, I have a class of 1st year junior high school boys. They are rowdy as anything. Yesterday, I decided to let them watch the movie “Robots”. One of them was sitting where the tv is supposed to go, so while two other boys were carrying it across the room I tried to get the boy to move. I gave a quick “Hup! Hup! Hup!”. The other boys thought I was saying the f word (in Japanese there’s no proper f sound, it’s more just blowing through pursed lips, like the start of “which” if you don’t say it like “witch”). The two tv-carriers set down the tv and almost wet themselves laughing. The others started doing star jumps around the room shouting “F*ck!!” I tried to shush them and not laugh at the same time. I failed. 

Oh, if you’re wondering, that’s one of my little ones dressed as a ladybird for Hallowe’en. He has an apple in his mouth. It’s a teeny tiny mini-apple. Yes, he’s that small. 

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Snowboarding at Yeti

So I finally went snowboarding last weekend. After a rocky start to the day (read – slept in til 11am when was supposed to be on the bus at 7, again) I met up with my new friend and convinced her to come with me. She has a car!

Note to Yeti Snowpark – your directions are rubbish! No directions should include the phrase “Find route 24”. It nearly killed us. Much simpler would be “if approaching from south, turn left onto route 24 when leaving expressway”, or “if approaching from north, turn right onto route 24 when leaving expressway” – we could work it out ourselves. Sheesh. 

An extra hour of driving around and stopping into five (5!) convenience stores for directions, we found route 24. Jubilation all around. 

Yeti park itself is a small snowpark by Mount Fuji. On the way there I took about 40 photos of Fuji, even though Friend said that once we got to Yeti we’d have the most amazing view. Good thing I ignored her, by the time we got there it was dark. 

Because it’s so early in the season there were only two slopes open. Or rather, one slope with two start points – they converge in the middle. There was only fake snow too, which usually would irritate the hell out of me, but because we arrived so late they had just spread a new layer for the night session so it was fine. 

Quick stop at the rental shop as Friend had to rent gear (2500 yen for clothes) and then on to the slope! It took a few goes to get the snow legs back and lose the Fear (the last time I snowboarded I fractured my nose) but soon I was careening down the mountain like the best of them (the beginners that is). 

It was my first time boarding at night, but I liked it. According to Friend, the park is packed during the day at the weekend. Buses come from the nearby cities and unload hundreds of people all at the same time so there are queues for everything. Tickets, rental, lifts, food, drinks, toilets. At night there was no queueing for anything. Even the lift queue moved as fast as I could skate on the snowboard, so it was perfect really. The slopes weren’t even that packed. 

The only downside of Yeti is the cost. You have to pay to go on the private road up to the park (500 yen). Then it’s 1000 yen to park. Plus the cost of the ticket. Plus rental. 

I didn’t have to pay for rental because I had already bought all my gear. (Post forthcoming on how to kit yourself out on the cheeeeeap.)

In conclusion – it was fun. I took a few spills, and there were a couple of crashes, but nothing a hot bath wouldn’t sort out. 

There was a minor freakout on the way home though when three rest stops in a row didn’t sell gas and we had to leave the expressway to get it. The poor car was running on vapours by the time we found it. 

Lesson – fill up whenever you can. You never know when your car’s next meal is coming from. 

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Reasons To Clean

As said before, I live alone. I find it hard to motivate myself to clean when no one else will see it. Also, the apartment is tiny and I haven’t gotten around to acquiring storage furniture (plastic boxes). 

It’s not actually dirty, just very very untidy. Piles of books, clothes, blankets, bits of paper, cosmetics, you know. 

Today though, I think I’m going to have to clean. 

1. I seem to have lost all my clothes. Particularly socks. I just wear the same few pairs over and over again (I do wash them). 

2. Right now there is a bug so big I can hear it moving around and I can’t find it in the mess. 

Arg. I’m fairly sure I have a bag of cleaning products around here somewhere…

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Not Snowboarding, Again

Ugh. 

I don’t know what it is about winter that ruins my sleep pattern so. 

I couldn’t sleep last night til after the time I was supposed to be getting up to go snowboarding. I told myself that I would just delay a couple of hours. Again, I got up mid-afternoon. 

Now, it’s 4am. 

Next weekend, I promise…

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