H1N1

It’s finally happened in Tokigawa. On Monday there were 6 JHS students from class 3-2 out sick from the H1N1 flu, so it was decided that none of the students from that class would come to school again until Friday.

I had heard of this happening in other towns in my area, and it’s always seemed like kind of a strange concept. Back in May or June, H1N1 first showed up in Tokigawa. Apparently 3 students at one of my elementary schools were sick, and I think they kept the students in 5^th grade home for a few days. Since then, I hadn’t heard of there being any serious problems with students being sick with any sort of flu. But then last Friday, one of the 3^rd-year students at my junior high school called in sick with the flu, and everyone has been on high alert since then.

On Monday, when I went to classes with 2^nd year students, 2/3rds of the students were wearing the hallmark Japanese white face-masks, and a lot of the teachers donned them first thing in the morning as well.

I should also probably interject at this point that my JHS students just finished mid-term exams last week, and the grades for the 3^rd year students are especially important this term because next term they will be applying to high schools. I’m sure all that stress has contributed to the situation.

Here's where I get opinionated, so stop reading if you couldn't give a flying fig about what I think about H1N1. ;-)

I don’t really know how other countries are handling the hype surrounding H1N1. I did read the other night on the BBC that Obama declared a state of emergency in the States to make sure all the resources health care professionals need in order to detect and treat patients with H1N1 were available, since it’s assumed a lot of people (understatement) are going to come down with it now that it’s full-on flu season. But I have no idea if the same thing is happening in schools or at businesses in the States or in other countries, i.e. if a certain number of students or employees from the same part of the school or company come down with H1N1 at the same time, if they keep everyone from that section home for a few days, hoping to contain the spread of the flu….I’d be curious to hear if anyone wants to comment!

I can’t get over the feeling that Japan is over-reacting to the H1N1 situation. Granted, I’m obviously no expert, and maybe in the end Japan will be the better for their caution (those of you in the medical field or have memorized the CDC website, feel free to correct my mis-perceptions!). But, from the first day more towards the beginning of the year when the news about H1N1 went global, people here started freaking out, canceling trips to Tokyo for example, for fear of catching H1N1, even though it hadn’t even shown up in Japan yet. It didn't take long for it to arrive in Japan after the 'global disbursement' discussion started. This was months before students were supposed to go to New Zealand and Australia for summer exchange programs, yet, even after multiple months of H1N1 being on Japanese soil, SO many of those short-term summer exchange programs were cancelled because people were afraid of catching the flu in a foreign country…even though by that point they were just as likely to catch it in Japan (I had a chance to give my opinion on the matter to our schools' Superintendent...I have no idea if anything I said made a difference, but thankfully our town's JHS exchange trip to New Zealand went ahead as scheduled! Although I did hear from the New Zealand side that our group was incredibly hypocondriacle (I know I just made up that word) this year...). There are bottles of anti-bacterial and alcohol solution at the entrances to almost any large-scale public place now…department stores, hotels, restaurants…which actually isn’t a bad idea even without the whole H1N1 situation! But I remember coming to school on a Monday two weeks after H1N1 arrived in Japan and all the teachers were telling me to be careful because over the weekend there had been one new case of H1N1 in Japan….and it had occurred about as far away from our area as you can get and still be in the same country. Yeah...I think I'm still going to be more concerned with being attacked by ninja mosquitoes, thank you very much...

Anyway, I think it’s fair to be cautious, since, as the CDC (Center for Disease Control) has indicated, it’s strange that this kind of flu is being passed from human to humans instead of just from animals to humans, and there’s no way of knowing yet whether or not it will further mutate. But it seems to me it would be just as useful to be telling people that, for example, more than 30,000 people die in the U.S. every year from normal flu, and seeing as how there haven’t been anywhere near that number of fatalities yet GLOBALLY for H1N1 (as far as I know anyway), that maybe we should calm down a little. Again, I’m no medical expert, but isn’t it normal for more people to become sick with a new strain of illness since nearly no one has ever had it before, therefore virtually no one has ever had a chance to build up antibodies against it? And isn’t it actually better for people to get H1N1 while it’s still relatively benign? To suffer through what usually ends up being symptoms very similar to those of the normal flu now, build up an anti-body army that might better protect an individual if H1N1 does become a little worse in the future? I wonder if it can be categorized in the same realm as chicken pox….better to get it now and get it over with than get it later when you suffer more.

Anyway, those are simply my musings from my little, rural corner of my Japanese island, which is again being inundated with rain from what I’m assuming is another typhoon. All being said, when the clinics in my town finally get ANY sort of flu vaccine, I’ll be one of the first in line, because I have asthma, so even the normal flu is twice as bad for me….I don’t like to consider how H1N1 would affect me, being more of a nuisance respiratorially and all (again, making up words, I know)!

All-Saitama Speech Contest

Last Tuesday, my regional speech contest student, her parents, one of our school’s English teachers, and myself headed to the city of Honjo to participate in the All-Saitama (prefectural-level) speech contest. It was my first experience at a speech contest of this level, and I was really interested to hear students from all over the prefecture. I’m sure I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I learn so much about Japanese students at speech contests. They can talk about stuff that I never hear them talk about otherwise, because spontaneously talking about such involved topics in English is pretty much impossible for 99% of junior high school students (as you can well imagine). With time, assistance and lots of practice, they can spin a more detailed, more complicated story…in English…about things that concern or interest them. And I finally get a chance at insight into the depths of the Japanese junior high school student psyche.

Anyway….! I had no idea what to expect from students at this level of contest. One of the English teachers at my school had mentioned that working on pronunciation prior to this particular contest was going to be the biggest challenge, because at this contest, we would be up against students who come from private junior high schools…enough said!

So, we arrived, and had to stand outside the community conference hall where the contest was being held because the doors would not be opened until 9am, exactly the time when sign-in was to begin. Definitely in Japan! As soon as the doors were opened, even though it looked like there was protocol for who was supposed to go in first, I burst through and made a beeline for the first toilet sign I saw, because I’d had WAY too many liquids before starting the 45-minute car journey to Honjo, and had had to stand around outside in the chilly morning air for 15 minutes before having access to a bathroom.

Funny thing was, this contest didn’t really seem that different than the regional contest. Lots of students I’ve never seen before wandering around in school uniforms looking nervous, lots of serious-looking people in suits and dress clothes who could have been parents, teachers, judges or dignitaries…it was difficult to tell, and lots of non-Japanese people like myself milling about looking completely out of place. The only difference this time was that only one of these faces was familiar…the ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) I know from a nearby village was in attendance, as his student had received 2^nd place at our regional contest. For the most part, seeing all those new ALT faces simply served as a reminder of just how many foreign Assistant English Teachers there were around, and just how few of them I really ever encounter.

For the opening ceremony (there is ALWAYS an opening and closing ceremony to EVERY event in Japan and they are ALWAYS the same), all 46 1^st and 2^nd place regional speech contest winners, their ALTs, English teachers and parents were all seated in a medium-sized concert hall. After speeches by an innumerous number of people, including someone from the local Pepsi corporation (who were apparently one of 3 sponsors for the event, and gave out free half-sized bottles of tea to everyone during the lunch break), they divided the students into 2 groups for the “semi-final” of the prefectural speech contest. One group stayed in the concert hall, and the other group was crammed into a room about 1/10^th the size on the 3^rd floor. Naturally the latter was our group. The contest suddenly went from seeming quite professional to having the appearances of being one of my grad school classes….except MUCH more crowded.

There was a podium in the middle at the front of the room, under a banner that said, IN JAPANESE, 61^st Annual All-Saitama English Speech Contest. The 2 facilitators/rule-readers/time-keepers sat in the right-side front corner of the room. The 23 students sat at the tables towards the front of the room, just behind the 4 judges, and the rest of us crowded into the tables at the back of the room and the chairs along the sides and very back of the room. There was a seat off to the right side of the room, in front of the facilitators where the “at-bat” student was to sit. Of course, because this student didn’t vacate the seat until they were to take the podium to give their speech, there were constantly students walking across the middle of the room to take their place in this seat during the part of each speech. I have to hand it to the kids…none of them got flustered or distracted by this consistent movement!

The first 3 students gave their speeches and then there was a break for the judges to confer. This happens at every speech contest. I can only assume that they do it so the judges can decide how they are going to award points and judge each speech based on what they’ve seen so far. I don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing for the students who go first. My student was the 2^nd speaker this time.

After the 13^th speaker, another break. After the 23^rd speaker, everyone dispersed for lunch, although at first they didn’t tell us what time we had to be back to find out whether or not our students were chosen for the top 4 of their section, which would mean they would move on to the final “speak-off” to be held just after lunch. Finally someone mentioned that the results would be posted by 1:30pm. The morning speeches didn’t finish until 1pm. I thought that was interesting…3.5 hours of opening ceremony and speeches and 30 minutes for lunch.

Anyway, the results were posted in the lobby roughly when they said they would be….of course the names were posted in kanji (even though, once again, this was an English-related contest), so I couldn’t figure out right away whether or not my student had made it or not, even though she was with me while we were looking at the board and I was asking her if her name was posted. I think she was a little distracted by all the hubbub. Finally I was able to get her to shake her head at me….she wasn’t in the afternoon finals. Bummer, but not a huge surprise. She had done well, but so had at least half the other students in her section, and it’s always impossible to tell how the judges are going to make their determinations. The judges write comment slips for each of the participants, which are available for the students to pick-up at the same time as the final results. I was only able to read the two comment sheets written in English, but just as an example of how varied the judges opinions can be, one judge wrote only that they enjoyed my student’s speech and that my student had a lot of passion. The other English-writing judge made MANY comments…you had pronunciation problems, there were mistakes with the English in your script, your gestures in the beginning were unnecessary but got better towards the end of the speech, etc.

We all decided to stay to watch the afternoon finals. It was our first chance to see a few of the speeches from the students in the other section. Of the final speeches, the topics were quite varied: about endangered cranes on a small island in southern Japan, about establishing a national Science Day so Japanese people can learn to have a more “scientific eye” relative to daily life, how joining a local international group with her mother developed the student’s opinion that we are all the same regardless of where we are from, how rice was the greatest food ever, the confidence that a student was able to build from attending a 2-day workshop held by an international group of university students called “The Young Americans,” a student’s unusual hobby of playing the Japanese traditional musical instrument ‘the shamisen,’ learning how to become a good Student Council President, and how annoyed a girl was with losing the Student Council President race apparently just because her last-minute opponent was a boy, and in Japan, boys always come first…but she’s not cool with that concept (even the fact that boys names are all read before girls names during roll-call each morning bothers her now), so she told us all to wait 20 years to see her picture on the front of the national newspapers as the first female Prime Minister.

There was a lot of energy in a lot of the final speeches, and/or the speech topics were really interesting. I think it was obvious to everyone that the final judgment would be a toss-up between the two Presidential speeches…they were both REALLY good, and both students had very good presence, delivery, and brought the audience into their speeches (which is difficult to do in a foreign language!). My student really liked the first presidential speech…done by a boy. I did too, but the girl’s speech was really good too….and I figured that last year’s winner had been a boy, so how cool would it be if this year’s winner was a girl, especially considering her speech topic. She won. She’ll be going to the All-Japan speech contest sometime soon. THAT contest would be really interesting to watch! But alas….

Anyway, my student didn’t seem too shocked or appalled that she didn’t make it to the finals. She really seemed to enjoy watching the speeches of the other students, which I think was very mature and enlightened of her! She really enjoys English anyway, and this experience was just a great one for her to have…good fodder for moving on into high school and university! It was a lot of fun for me too, not just attending the speech contests, but it’s always nice to have an opportunity to work more closely with a student, rather than just stand in front of all of them and read vocabulary words at them. And I’m sure it was an interesting experience for her, just training with me! I made her read her speech in the gym during club practices, from the table tennis balcony, on a platform at the head of the outdoor sports grounds, watch “Toastmasters” videos on YouTube, and talk to me about specifics regarding the TV show she saw about street kids in other countries in Asia, which is what her speech was about. I even said to her that I hope in 10 years, she randomly remembers back to her speech contest training, and how crazy her ALT was. :-D

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way Back from the Izakaya

Last Friday, my friend Eiko came to Tokigawa to go to aerobics class with me. After aerobics class, we were hungry, and all the eateries in Tokigawa would be closed in 15 minutes. Plus, Eiko would have had to wait a little too long for the train that would carry her away from Tokgiawa. So, we decided to head into the nearby town of Ogawa to eat at an izakaya (kind of like the Japanese version of a diner) that I’ve loved since arriving in Japan (the family who runs it loves foreigners!). Ogawa also had more favorable train access for Eiko. Everyone wins!

So, we drove over to Ogawa, and I bypassed a few of the small parking lots closer to the izakaya that I normally park in, because it’s late, and the parking lots are technically for nearby businesses (even though the businesses had been closed for hours by this point), so I’m a little worried that those fences around the parking lots are hiding some sort of gate that will be shut on me while we’re eating, trapping the car. Instead, I drive about a block away to the parking lot of Ogawa’s town hall, where my friend who lives in Ogawa had told me just a few weeks before it’s always okay to park. We parked the car, hit the izakaya, had the inner workings of the Japanese baseball league playoffs explained to us by the owner’s son, and laughed at the owner’s jokes about American baseball league playoff games being played between his two favorite teams, the New York Yankees and Charlie’s Angels. About an hour later, we call it an evening, shook hands with the owner, and headed back to the car…..

When we returned to the parking lot, my car was the only car left in the lot, and chains had been roped between all the small posts flanking either side of all the entrances and exits to the parking lot. The chains had been locked with padlocks. THIS was a problem…

After a few seconds of surveying the scene and standing dumbfounded, we walked the perimeter of the parking lot, looking for exit possibilities. And trust me, I considered EVERY possibility. Unfortunately, the chains didn’t sag enough to lift up high enough to drive the car under. The curbs running along the road between where the chained posts blocked the driveways were too high to drive over. There was a bit of a sidewalk space between the posts and the street curbs, which I thought I might be able to fit the car through….I’d have to run over orange and white plastic posts that were fitted into the ground and set a few inches away from the chained posts on the sidewalk-side of the entrance, but at that point, I wasn’t too concerned about that. I checked the bendability of the plastic posts before preparing to run them over, and they were quite flexible, so I figured this plan would be brilliant. And it would have worked too, if the stupid trees that were planted on the street curbs near the chained posts weren’t there. We saw a police car drive by, and seeing as how downtown Ogawa barely exists, figured they’d drive by again very soon, so we waited on the corner for them to come by again. They did, and while they were sitting at a red light across the street, I tried to wave them down. When their light turned green, they turned in the opposite direction of where we were standing, drove away, and didn’t come back. Lovely, helpful police (I told this story to a Japanese friend the next day, and he said they were probably scared of us because we were foreigners…to say Japanese police in rural areas are not assertive is probably an understatement!).

At that point, there was nothing else to do. The car was stuck for the night. Knowing my luck, I was also concerned that it would be impounded by the time I got back to it the next day, if I could even get to it the next day. Since I can’t read kanji, I had no idea if the lot was closed for the weekend or what. The other problem was that my last means of public transportation back to my town had left half an hour earlier. My friend who lives in Ogawa wasn’t home. Eiko was kind enough to offer to let me stay at her apartment for the evening, since we still had the option of taking the train from Ogawa back towards where she lives. The funny thing about that was that she lives in Higashi-matsuyama, a city about a further 20 minutes away from Ogawa. My house was in Tokigawa, but I couldn’t get there because my car was locked up in Ogawa, so I had to spend the night in Higashi-matsuyama, which I could access by train. I think it took a good 45-minutes from the point when it was decided I would go to Higashi-matsuyama for me to stop spontaneously laughing over the logistics of the situation. As we walked the 2 blocks from the padlocked parking lot to the train station to head towards Eiko’s, we walked past the 2 smaller lots I’d bypassed earlier in the evening, and yes, you guessed it….they were still open.

Of course, just to add to the ridiculousness of it all, when we arrived at the train station, the electronic signs said our next train left from track 4. So we went up and down the stairs from the entrance/track 2 area to track 4. As soon as we reached track 4, the signs changed and said our next train was leaving from track 2, which is where we had just been. So, we went back up and down the stairs from track 4 to track 2, got on the train that had already been sitting there when we entered the station, and sat…..and sat……and sat. For some reason there was no departure time posted for the train we were on, which NEVER happens, and it was obvious we weren’t going anywhere quickly. I think it was another 20-30 minutes before the train actually left, and we had no idea why we weren’t going anywhere, because they never made any announcements. More fodder for my spontaneous chuckles.

The next morning, I headed back to Ogawa, hoping to rescue the car. As the train pulled into Ogawa and neared the train station, which was near the lot where I’d had to abandon the car for the night, I caught a quick glimpse of the lot….and the chains were still up. With a continually sinking feeling, I walked the 2 blocks from the train station to the town hall lot, hoping the entire way I’d simply seen a mirage. Upon arrival at the parking lot corner, it was confirmed. The chains were still up and the car was still trapped. After about 2 minutes of wondering exactly what I could do from there on out, and who exactly the parking lot belonged to, I was finally able to discern that the lot belonged to the red building behind me. It wasn’t clear that the building was open, so I wasn’t holding my breath. But then, a lady who had been standing outside the doors to the building reading something entered, and that gave me my first hope in 11 hours. I walked into the building, and there was a reception area and 3 people working it. One was on the phone, however, the other was in the back looking busy, and the third was helping the lady that went in just before me, so I had to wait., which left me to imagining having to take the train or bus back to Tokigawa from Ogawa, which would be a long trek, and all I wanted to do was get home and take a shower.

I was finally able to approach a pleasant-looking older woman at the desk, and I tried to explain as clearly as possible in my horrible Japanese that I’d made a mistake last night and parked on the wrong side of the parking lot. Yeah, that’s right, the wrong side. Here’s the kicker…there are two sides to this evil little parking lot, although when the chains are down, it just looks like one big lot. The right side of the lot is open 24/7 (apparently). The left side is open only 9am-9:30pm. Of course, I parked on the left side. Had I parked on the right side, I wouldn’t be writing this blog right now! She and the worker in the back, who, now that I was explaining the situation was paying attention to me, apparently understood what I was trying to tell them, and just kind of smiled at me and asked me to wait….because the guy who was still on the phone obviously needed to be involved in the situation too. Once he was finally off the phone, the nice older lady explained to him the situation, and he smiled knowingly, got up, and came around to the older lady’s side of the desk area and proceeded (I think) to tell me what I already knew, that the side of the lot I had parked on was only open for a certain amount of time each day, was not available for overnight parking, was closed at night because of “bad men” who would used that lot if it were open, and something about the police. I’m sure he was trying to give me a lecture of some sort about what an idiot I had been, but it was lost on me, and I just kept smiling and apologizing, bowing, and looking like a humble, innocent foreigner who just didn’t get ‘the Japanese way’ (you’d be surprised how far that can get you).

He took me out to the lot with a set of keys with the promise to set my car free. On the way to the lot he asked me the usual questions, where I was from, what I was doing in Japan, where I lived in Japan, etc. I think it helped when I said I was a teacher in the rural neighboring town and that I didn’t come into Ogawa often to use the parking lots. He even gave me his business card and said if I had any other difficulties in Ogawa, I should feel free to contact him. I have to admit, that was a nice way to end the whole debacle!

I think in the end they were just relieved that I wasn’t one of those “bad men” using the parking lot illegally (of course that begs the question of how to keep “bad men” out of the right side of the parking lot that is always open…).

My life cracks me up.

Typhoon

I started this blog entry the day after the typhoon was technically over, but didn’t finish it until a week later, so have fun with the different tenses and time references!

At least down here on my bit of Honshu Island, the latest typhoon experience has ended. I woke up this morning to bright sunshine, bright blue skies and wisps of soft, brilliant white clouds, all things I have not seen for quite some time (or so it feels)! But the middle of the week was interesting. Although, for those of you looking for serious natural disaster drama, you’re not going to read about it here!

Why not? The region that I live in is arguably one of the safest in Japan. My particular prefecture (like a state) is one of the only landlocked prefectures in the country. Most of our borders are ringed by mountains. And wherever the fault lines lie underneath Japan’s islands, they apparently do not lie under Saitama (my prefecture). When there are earthquakes, we get the watered down aftershocks. When there are typhoons, we usually just get rain. And that’s pretty much what happened this time too. It had been rainy pretty much since the end of the previous week; nothing serious, just enough to keep the sports grounds too soggy for the baseball, tennis and track & field teams to do their thing outdoors. That is, until that Wednesday. It had been raining off and on all day…when I went home after school, I didn’t need my umbrella. When I left my house again 15 minutes later, I wished I’d had it open for my journey down the stairs to the car. I headed into Kawagoe, a city about an hour from my town, for a friend’s birthday party, and from the train station to the restaurant, I didn’t need my umbrella. Leaving the restaurant on the way to karaoke was either or. After karaoke was a yes, let’s take out them brellies. And as we sat waiting for the train at the end of the evening, I remember looking out across the tracks when it suddenly just started coming down, and I thought (and accidentally said outloud), “Here it comes.” By the time I got back to the station where my car was parked (about 2 hours later because there had been some sort of delay with the trains and the one we were waiting for didn’t come until midnight), it was raining buckets (although not as uncomfortable to drive in as I’ve ever experienced).

It continued to rain all night and into the early morning. The school officials met at 6am the next day (Thursday) and it was still raining pretty convincingly, so they decided to cancel classes for the students for the day. Of course the teachers still had to go to school (a rule I will NEVER understand) and by mid-morning, the rain had abated and it was actually getting sunny! By the afternoon, it was sunny, and even the sports fields looked like they were starting to dry out a bit. A few time clouds lingered over the mountains, but never came in to do anything more. The winds did pick up in the afternoon, which I thought was strange timing. But for the most part, that was our typhoon experience!

I didn’t understand why they were talking about canceling classes for this typhoon when it had never been a discussion for any other typhoon we’ve had since I’ve been here. It wasn’t until the day all the teachers were sitting around the teachers’ room without the students around, watching the news updates on TV about the typhoon when I saw the map of the typhoon directly over the middle of Japan that I understood why this typhoon had been given different consideration. I’d heard some people reference this typhoon as the worst for this area in the past 10 years, and I can see why. Although, because of our location on Honshu, I think we were spared the nastiness that other parts (especially the coastal areas) encountered.

So there you have it!

Speech Contest Winner!

My student came away with 1st place today at the regional JHS English Speech Contest!!! SUPER exciting! I've been working with her almost every day after school for 3-4 weeks now. After 4 years of helping train students for this annual contest, it's nice to come away with the first place prize finally! Although it helps that she's a totally natural speech-maker and really enjoys English to boot. :-D

She gets to go to the prefectural contest in 2 weeks now....more late-evening practices on the horizon! I'll get to go with, and I'm excited to see what this contest is like at the prefectural level.


That's it. Just wanted to share because I'm SO happy! :-)

Dragon Fire Flower Festival

Every fall, a very distinctive red flower blooms here in my little slice of Japan. I have no idea what they call the flower in Japanese, and it's possible that my friend was just making up the name "Dragon Fire Flower," but it's fitting, so that's what I'm calling it until I know better. ;-)

There is a town not so far from me that has a festival dedicated to this flower for most of the month of September. I finally had a chance to go this year. Here are the photos from the festival. :-)

Saori & Ken wedding photos

These photos didn't load in the order I was hoping for, so humor me with the order in which you have to view them. ;-D

View of Yokohama from the top floor of the Hotel New Grand, wedding reception site.

Yokohama's China Town

Yokohama

At the church, end of the ceremony...you'd think they were Beckham and Posh Spice for all the cameras at the bottom of the stairs!

Family photo on the steps of the church after the ceremony.

The newlyweds

My 'friend-for-the-day,' Chikako, Ken, Saori and the old roommate. :-)

At the wedding reception. Saori's flight attendant co-workers do a skit with Saori, kind of as an initiation for Ken. :-)

Everything you need to be a good flight attendant! Headphones, eye mask, apron.

Saori's mother escorts Saori out of the reception hall so she can change into her 3rd outfit for the day.

Ken's mother escorts Ken out of the reception hall so he can change....again. ;-)

Ken's buddies pour him drinks and keep him company after Saori left the reception hall to change.

Ken and Saori are back, in their final outfits for the day.

Ken and Saori had everyone write on a small card 2 things- where they thought Ken & Saori's lives would be like after 10 years, and where they thought their own lives would be in 10 years. When they entered the reception hall after their final outfit change of the evening, they went around to all the tables and picked up the cards, put them in the basket. Then they brought them to a lock-box time capsule, which was locked by Saori's father. :-)

The video congratulations by the tennis player Ai Sugiyama!

Saori reads a letter outloud that she wrote to her new in-laws, as well as to her mother and father. This is done at the closing of the reception.

After the bride reads her letter to the parents, the bride and groom deliver bouquets of flowers to each set of parents who were standing at the back of the hall during the reading of the letter.

Walking back down the aisle at the end of the ceremony.

Exchanging rings

Approaching the altar and priest, the Japanese twist on the Catholic ceremony....everyone bows. :-)

Starting the walk towards the future. Saori and her father.

The wedding begins.

Saori & Ken: Japanese Wedding #2

I still remember when Saori came to my apartment in Boston (Somerville, just on the border with Cambridge) for her roommate interview. I had myself just moved into the one vacant bedroom of the three bedroom apartment, but had immediately found myself in charge of pretty much everything related to the apartment. Of the other 2 occupants, one was a Ukrainian grad student who was leaving 2 weeks after I moved in, and the other was a Japanese mother who perpetually kept her room in this apartment so she could come to the U.S. for three months at a time to be near her son who was a student at the Rhode Island Art Institute, although she was hardly ever around, even when she was in the U.S. So, when I (way to soon after moving in) had to look for someone to fill the Ukrainian student’s room, I was really hoping to find someone who would be around for awhile and could help manage things.

I didn’t take long to get multiple responses to the roommate wanted ad posting. As with all big cities that not only have a large number of general residents, but also plays host to an insane number of university students (there are over 100 universities, colleges and other higher education institutes in the greater Boston area), available rooms in “good” locations (near subway lines…my apartment happened to be located almost perfectly between 2 prime subway stops) are fairly coveted….even if they ARE ancient and over Chinese fast food restaurants! I’d already done a few interviews before Saori came over for her interview. The earlier interviews hadn’t been that bad, but I hadn’t felt 100% comfortable with any of the applicants up to that point. It was more of, “Well, I guess that could work…” Of course being a good Japanese person, Saori was very polite, sweet, very smiley and under other circumstances, probably would have seemed immediately ideal, except for the one major problem….she was a study abroad student who was going home after a few months, which meant it was guaranteed I’d be doing the same roommate search song and dance again 3-4 months later. Grrrr.

Well, of course that train of thought didn’t last long. Having been a short-term international student myself, I knew how difficult such a situation could be. I mean, even as an American it took me a month to find a place to live in Boston! As a short-term international student, I’d never actually had to go out searching for my own accommodation, let alone do it in a foreign language. There were probably a lot of other people she had/could interview(ed) with that wouldn’t see that side of her situation, and I could imagine her spending all her free time traveling around the greater Boston area, going from interview to interview only to be turned down because she was an international student. Besides, she seemed the most likeable and easy to live with of all the people I had interviewed up to that point and I reckoned that having a roommate for only 4 months that I got along with really well was better than having one longer-term who was bad news!

So, anyway, that’s how I met Saori. She had come to the U.S. 6 months prior to do an exchange program at a college in Santa Barbara, CA, and wanted to spend the second half of the year doing an internship at a TV station in Boston because she was a journalism major back in Japan and wanted to be a TV announcer. She was a great roommate and friend and we stayed in touch off and on over the years after she went back to Japan. Before she left, she of course invited me to stay with her if I ever came to Japan. I hoped I’d find myself in Japan at some point in the future, but back then, didn’t really see it happening.

Fast-forward to 8 years later. I’d been living in Japan for 3 years already and had multiple chances to call in that invitation she extended if I were to ever come to her country. I’d visited her a number of times in Tokyo, she joined my volleyball friends and I on a ski trip, and she even invited me to spend my first Christmas in Kobe with her and her family. And, as luck would have it, I was around to be in attendance at her wedding as well, when she met Mr. Right (I’d been around for a definite Mr. Wrong too)!

Saori and Ken got married on September 19th. Ken is actually a fairly common Japanese name too, so yes, he’s Japanese, no, he’s not a foreigner. Their wedding was in the well-known port city of Yokohama, which is just south/west of Tokyo along the coast. Saori and her family are Catholics (part of the, like, 1% of Japanese who are Christian), so the wedding took place in a Catholic church in the old foreign section of the city. I’m pretty sure Ken’s not Catholic, so that had to be a unique experience for him and his family! I’m not Catholic either, so I can’t say whether or not their ceremony was standard for a Catholic wedding, but I would imagine it was, with those few, small differences I mentioned from Chikao & Mai’s wedding that make the ceremony distinctly Japanese. Saori’s father walked her only 2/3rd of the way to the altar and Ken came forward to meet them, at which point they did a lot of bowing to each other before Ken whisked Saori off to the alter (and when I say “whisked,” I’m speaking snail-speed whisked). There was a Maid of Honor and a Best Man, and the Maid of Honor wore a kimono, as did half the women in attendance, including the mothers of the bride and groom. Unfortunately none of the men wore kimonos (it really is a pity, because they have the same strange appeal as the kilt-tux elicits over there in Scotland). There were a few other small things unique to the Japanese Catholic experience (for instance the ceremony was really short, ha ha!), but for the most part, nothing that out of the ordinary. Actually a few funny things happened that made me feel right at home during this ceremony. For example, the priest (Japanese priest this time, and on the elder side) either lost his place or forgot what he was supposed to say next when they were doing some sort of blessing of the rings, so the emcee lady standing at the microphoned podium on the side had to prompt him with a few words before he could figure out what to say next. Saori had some difficulty getting Ken’s ring on his finger, and appeared to be just shoving it along, to which he was, at least, getting a bit of a chuckle out of. And there were a few parts in the beginning when Saori and Ken would kind of look over at each other, trying to figure out what was going on because they weren’t sure what they were supposed to do next (like when the priest told them to sit down while he was giving his speech!).

The ceremony finished, the newlyweds, Best Man and Maid of Honor stood in the small annex at the back of the church just inside the front door to greet people and take their congratulations as they exited. And as we exited, someone was handing us fist-fulls of flower petals to throw at the couple as they came down the stairs outside. We went out and stood around on the steps and did our duty, trying to get as many flower petals as possible stuck in Ken’s hair and Saori’s veil. When they got to the bottom of the stairs, the professional photographer for the wedding made them go back up the stairs and come down again because she hadn’t gotten the proper photos. Hee hee!

Photographs were taken on the steps of the church at that point, the first one being a group shot of all the people who attended the wedding ceremony, which I thought was a cool idea! After were of course various family combinations, then a quick chance for friends to also sneak in photos with the newlyweds. Then a bus whisked away the family members who didn’t have cars, and taxis that we didn’t have to pay for (yay!) were waiting patiently to take other wedding-goers to the hotel where the reception was to be held. However, there were about 2 hours between the end of our time at the church and the start of the reception. Here’s where luck had been on my side.

When I got to the church 20 minutes before the ceremony was to start, as instructed, I, as my friend says, ‘picked a pony,’ which in this case happened to be a family-looking group dressed as if attending a wedding, and followed them through an outer door on the lower floor on the church, which appeared to be the “holding area” for guests before the wedding. Of course everyone else was Japanese and were divided amongst the few tables set up, which actually had those push-spout beverage jugs (small size) full of tea sitting on them. I couldn’t tell if everyone in the room were just family and I wasn’t supposed to be there, so I made a bee-line for the bathroom as soon as I walked in and felt a bit disoriented. That, and I’d walked from the reception-site hotel to the church, which was about 20 minutes on a slightly windy, slighty humid day, so I was a bit freaked as to how completely disheveled I looked. When I came out of the bathroom, I felt the urge to sneak outside, see if I could get into the worship area, and wait there. I acted out this plan of flight in stages, slowly making my way towards the outer door. Just inside the door, I thought I’d give it one more stab, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do at that point. The first guest I asked just told me that so thought maybe it was okay for everyone to be waiting down there together. The second guest I asked answered back in English, and so naturally the whole, “Oh, you speak English!” conversation ensued, which is when I figured out that she actually spoke quite good English, and I hoped she didn’t try to run away from the silly foreigner so I could follow her lead for what I was supposed to do from there on out. And she ended up begin really cool about it, basically adopting me for the rest of the day.

Her name was Chikako, but I knew she was going to be cool when she said that I could call her “Chica,” just like the Spanish word. Saori was her friend from university; they were in the same journalism program. Chikako also studied French though, where Saori focused on English (although, naturally, Chikako’s English was also fantastic). She had lived in Paris for 4 and ½ years working as a Japanese teacher (and here I am in Japan working on my 4th year teaching English!). She is currently a magazine editor in Osaka, but from next fall intends to go back to Paris on a working holiday visa, because as nice as Japan is for her, she loves France and getting to know other parts of the world. During the 2-hour layover between the wedding and the reception, we went to Yokohama’s famous China Town, because she’d never been to Yokohama, wanted to see at least a bit of it during her 5 hours in town, and was very interested in the cultural aspect of that area of town. I kept thinking how crazy it was that the first person I talked to at the wedding was basically the perfect person to be my ‘friend-for-the-day!’

When we went into the reception hall, I was a bit worried, because I didn’t know what kind of people I’d be sitting with, or if I’d be able to communicate with them. Chikako and I ended up at the same table (Greece…I’ll explain in a bit), but on opposite sides. Bummer! The girl sitting to my left was nice, but didn’t seem that comfortable trying to talk to me. There was a younger guy sitting to my right, with his wife. About 10 minutes into the reception, after some seemingly big-wig guy gave a speech on behalf of the groom (I think the speaker might have been the tennis coach from the groom’s university team), the guy sitting to my right suddenly piped up in English, “Can you understand what they’re saying?” Oh! Another English speaker! So I said, “Oh, you speak English well!” He said, “No, no, just a little. My wife speaks better English.” And indeed she did. Saori is a flight attendant on international flights for arguably the #1 airline in Japan, JAL (which from what I hear is also going to be folded into the conglomerate that is now Delta….but anyway….), and the wife was a flight attendant on the same team as Saori. The husband and lived in Italy for 6 years working in the fashion industry (which he still did, but now in Japan). Knowing Saori, especially the fact that she’s an international flight attendant, I should not have been so concerned with finding people I could easily talk to! Oh, so I mentioned earlier that I was at the “Greece” table. Each of the tables at the reception had a different country theme, for obvious reasons.

Before attending the wedding, I actually didn’t know anything about Saori’s significant other, not even his name! During the course of the evening, besides learning that his name was Ken, I would discover that he is a TV announcer and sports news director! He works for a station called TV Tokyo 7 and instead of trying to describe what it is he does, all I’ll say is that there were video congratulations to Ken and Saori shown at the reception from at least half a dozen of today’s top Japanese sports personalities, including Ai Sugiyama, Japan’s leading women’s tennis player (who was the only one I knew by name…others were only face recognition). During the photo montage (of Ken and Saori’s lives), many photos were shown of Ken at various big-name sporting events, including the Beijing Olympics and the French Open tennis tournament. Ken had apparently been the captain of his tennis team during university, which is highly impressive in it’s own right, but add to that the university he attended, Waseda University, which I believe would be considered amongst the Ivy League of Japanese universities. As all good friends do with the life-partner choices of their friends, I watched Ken closely throughout the day and evening to see what kind of person he was, and again was impressed. He seemed to be pretty laid-back, at ease, and laughed a lot at all the embarrassing things said about him, things done to him during the reception. By the end of the evening, I could say that I was truly quite happy for Saori! I just hope I have a chance to hang out with the two of them on a less mass-group scale sometime to really put him to the test. ;-)

This Week in Class

So, during one of the first year JHS English classes this week, we taught the students plurals. They had to stand up and tell either me or the main English teacher something that they had more than one of (two pens, three books, six dogs, etc). On my side of the room when a boy in the front seat raised his hand, the boy behind him tried to get him to tell me how many pairs of underwear he had (one of the words used for underwear in Japan is “pants,” which is of course naturally pluralized, and of course hilarious to a 12 year old). So I immediately told the second boy that when I got around to him, HE was going to have to use that as his answer. I went around and listened to a few other students and figured by the time I got back to this boy he’d have chickened out and changed his answer to something standard and safe. However, when I went back to him, with as straight a face as he could muster, he told me he had “10 pants.” Then he started cracking up, and so did I. 10 points to him for originality!

And this week’s elementary school English lesson was with 3rd and 4th grade students. The lesson theme was sports, because all the elementary schools in town had just had their school sports festival 2 Saturdays before. I opened each class by asking the students if they enjoyed the sports festival and what their favorite event was. In the 4th grade class I went to just before lunch, one of the boys raised his hand and said the name of one of the dance events in Japanese. I recognized the last bit of what he said, so I kind of knew what he was talking about, but I’ve taken to getting the students, especially in elementary school to use gestures to help explain what they are saying to me in Japanese (even if I understand them). So, I asked the student to show me a bit what the event was, thinking he’d do a few moves, I could say, “Oh! A dance!” and move on to the next student. Well, before you knew it, the student in charge of the CD player had the CD for the dance music in the player, and 2/3rds of the class were on their feet re-enacting the dance for me. It was SO funny and SO adorable, that even though it was going to eat up about 5 minutes out of the 45 minute class time, I let them perform almost the entire dance. Since the homeroom teacher seemed to be getting a kick out of it as well, there was no reason to stop them!

My kids crack me up sometimes. Actually, almost always!