Closing Curtains

It's a little late to be writing farewells, but it feels wrong to leave this blog hanging open-ended.

I left Japan on August 9th, 2011, after 1 year and 4 months of the most incredible adventure I've ever had. I cried buckets and lugged home a suitcase stuffed with gifts and little else (literally--I had to abandon all my clothes in a Japanese thrift store to make room).  I went to endless goodbye parties with friends and fellow teachers that only made me less and less willing to leave.  I witnessed two weddings, a friends' movie premiere, and spent my last day in Tokyo Disney Sea. I never once felt ready to go. But it was my time.

I had to go because I am starting my Master's program in Leeds, England, this fall. I really wanted to put it off but when it came down to it, I just couldn't shake the feeling that this was my window of opportunity and if I ignored it it would close. And now that I'm here, I feel ready. Japan taught me to be.

My one regret is that I never met my successor, or got his/her contact information. I did my best to leave things in order for him/her, and I hope he/she finds this blog and that is helps him/her to know what to expect. Most of all, I hope he/she takes very good care of Iide-Machi and all its people. They are the most incredible in all the world.

...Though I may be biased.

Journey

This week I was scheduled to work in the junior high school for the first time in four months, thanks to a teacher shuffle and a series of testing periods. After so many changes and marathon studying sessions, the teacher thought the kids could use a bit of relaxation so she asked me to structure an entire lesson around something that would encourage the kids to believe in themselves. Namely, the first episode of Glee.

GLEE!

I went out and rented the DVD on my lunch break and spent my afternoon in the board of education, surrounded by people in suits, watching Glee with the sound muted on my laptop. I had to pre-watch it and determine which clips would be appropriate to show in school; I wasn't exactly looking for an opportunity to explain to a bunch of Japanese 15-year-olds why one of the characters was planting pot in a locker and why someone else was faking a pregnancy. I was proud of the results:  I managed to pare the episode neatly down to only its essential, cheesily inspiring bits. You know what I mean...the parts that really make it worthy of its name.

I introduced the lesson by explaining some characteristics of American high schools that the kids might find strange, such as Spanish classes and the lax dress code. Then I asked what the kids thought of when they imagined American schools, and every student replied with the same word: "freedom."

We started the show. It got a few laughs out of some of the class clowns, but most of the students were silent all the way through the hijinks and musical numbers. As the last, "DON'T STOP!!" of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" rolled over the classroom and I turned off the TV, I looked out over their impassive expressions and felt a little resigned. I knew better than to expect much of a reaction, having witnessed many times the strange effect junior high can have on once energetic kids--especially when they were in their last year, like these ones, and could already feel high school breathing down their necks. But I feel like the effect is especially marked in Japanese schools. Some of these kids are as tightly contained as those little novelty towel pills, and I just wish I knew what water would make them gasp and expand.

I don't know anyone who actually uses these once they stop looking like antibiotics from Hell. The "towels" feel like recycled cardboard.

That effect was even more obvious when we asked the kids to write down something that they would believe in. We told them writing in Japanese was fine and I gave them an example (my persistently recurring belief that I will speak Japanese well someday, despite the 7+ unsuccessful years of studying that beg to differ), but when it was time for the kids to try it most just stared at us. My co-teacher explained, "I don't think they've ever been asked to think of something like that before." The class time ran out and the kids handed in their papers, all blank. I made an aimless apology to the teacher afterward, she said she was sure the kids had fun even if none of them showed it, and I left.

I returned two days later to teach a different lesson to the first years. That went much better. The kids all knew me from their last year in elementary school, and they clapped and cheered when I entered the class. Then they followed me around afterwards, asking me to teach them dances like the macarena and constantly demanding I recite their names and distinguishing characteristics just to make sure I hadn't forgotten them in the four months we'd been apart. Just like old times. We ate lunch together in the classroom while listening to music on the intercom, and I had been expecting to hear the familiar (that is, overplayed) AKB48:

CAUTION: Do NOT play this if you are not prepared to witness some painfully gratuitous fan service. Usher the children out of the room, shut the blinds, don't answer the phones.

But instead I got:

I was so excited I started singing along and playing a mean air guitar. I was rocking so hard some kids graciously edged their desks away to give me more room and stared at the ceiling because they knew intuitively that I am very shy. And I know that we all know that they knew that I knew (and appreciated) what they were trying to do when I flung my hands out to them and belted, "DOOON'T STOP. BELIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEVIN'," with extra panache and squinty rock-star eyes.

After my lunch performance I laughed all the way back to the teacher's room, where I met my co-teacher and asked if she'd requested the Journey song. 

"No," she said, grinning. "The 3rd year students brought the CD with them and asked us to play it."

Look Ma, Famous!

Someone made this commercial for our beloved Zao mountain to encourage tourists to brave the northern areas of Japan. I was there at that firework festival with all the ALT's and, consequently, in the video at the end...juuuust off to the left, where the camera's view ends. ;)

Ishinomaki

Yesterday I went to the disaster area. I feel like I ought to pay great attention to detail in this entry, crafting each word to convey…all of THAT. The sight. The smell.  But each of my attempts is more awkward than the last; the more skillfully I try to paint a picture, the further from the truth it becomes. Simply, there are no words.

Some friends invited me to volunteer in a shelter in Ishinomaki, one of the towns badly hit by the tsunami. Those made homeless by the quake and the flood have taken shelter in a local school, living in the gym. Their physical needs are well-provided for thanks to donations and to organizations like the Red Cross, but the refugees are beginning to feel the effects of a long departure from life as they knew it. So volunteers visit as often as possible to play with the kids and help in any way they can.

It was a long drive—six hours one-way—and the whole time I kept my eyes trained on the passing scenery, waiting for the first signs of disaster.  They were surprisingly long in coming; I saw a few cracked buildings and passing army trucks after about five hours on the road.  Then we passed through a tunnel, identical in every way to the countless others we had driven through except slightly grimier. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light I realized that the grime was thick and streaked with evidence of water lines and debris.  When we exited into the afternoon light on the other side, there was no mistaking that we had reached our destination: we were looking down on a town that was literally awash with broken wood and garbage and twisted metal.
Some houses still stood with only broken windows and 5-foot-high muddy water marks to show what they’d been through.  Other buildings sagged in on themselves, completely gutted by the cars and other large debris that had punched through them. Materials seemed all wrong everywhere I looked: metal and wood drooped like wet silk; whole roofs lay flopped over like sad pancakes.  The air was full of the smell of rotting plants and garbage.  Fish lay caked in mud in the gutters where they had been left behind when the wave retreated.  We passed a gas station that was nothing more than a hanging roof, with the entire roof and upper portion of a house resting beneath it.  The road at least was clear and safe; nevertheless I had to navigate around jutting mountains of decimated appliances, glass, and vehicles.

The school, surprisingly, was relatively unaffected.  And the children themselves were just as energetic as any of my own students. To be honest, I’m not sure our visit was all that helpful; the kids were more than capable of entertaining themselves with the cards, games, and books that had either been salvaged from the school or donated.  But they were happy to let me watch them play magic monster card games and to share their watermelon-flavored gum with me, provided I kept my picture-taking to a minimum.  One girl, Ami, introduced me to her sisters and brother and let me read comics with her. The only time I saw the children become somber was when they told me about their own ALT, an American girl who was killed by the tsunami.   The kids liked her. She had been trying to learn Japanese.

The adults, meanwhile, had constructed little pens out of blankets and bags on the floor for their families, and spent most of the time napping within. When snack time rolled around everyone patiently waited to receive their rice balls and little pieces of chocolate while Red Cross workers and international relief forces milled around in bright neon vests, seeing to everyone’s needs.

When it was time for us to go we walked out onto the playground and watched some  kids jump from the swings, only to rush right back and yell, “Push me! Push me!” A teenage girl leaned against the jungle gym, avidly texting and faking nonchalance in the face of her boyfriend’s advances.  A group of boys played soccer, right in the middle of another group of boys in the middle of a baseball game. It could have been any school day, anywhere, except for the pile of wrecked cars leaning against the slide and the gutted house just beyond. And then we drove away, dodging wreckages on the way, through that tunnel again into the eerie normalcy on the other side.

Cabin Fever

Only two days have passed so far since the gasoline shortage imposed a kind of house arrest on us all. And it only took me the first 15 minutes of the first day to completely abandon all attempts at productivity and set up permanent camp on my couch. My water is stored, my canned goods stacked, my milk already completely binged and replaced with tea.  A rental car arrived this morning, but its one tank of gas is all I expect to see for a while so I'm saving it in case I have a chance to do some rescuing. The trains aren't running so I am restricted to the places I can walk to.

This morning we had a brief scare when it appeared that the wind might blow some radiation from the plants in our direction. Everyone was ordered to stay indoors and avoid the ominous rain at all costs.  Of course later we found out the wind hadn't blown anything our way at all, and even if it had, the radiation would only be a fraction of the strength we'd encounter in a standard x-ray. But that didn't stem the tide of e-mails from fellow ALTs, all practically shouting homegrown wisdom in a bid for authority over our little force of couch potatoes.

Apparently, all we need to know about disaster preparedness we learned from watching zombie movies.

A bright spot came later, when I'd given up on connecting with the outside world and turned to drama shows instead. A friend, Yuriko, braved the outdoors to bring me an early birthday gift: a name stamp, some Gegege no Kitaro postcards, a few tins of canned salmon, eggs, and rice.

Now it just comes down to waiting.

The Event

I always used to watch the news footage of natural disasters with a feeling of impotence, nestled safely within Utah's mountains, far away from the actual scene of the tragedy. But today, sitting just 2 hours away from the epicenter of Japan's biggest earthquake, I find myself just as ineffective as ever.

The day has been a long string of surreality. I worked at the board of education--a guaranteed long, dull day of studying Japanese and trying to maintain a productive facade. When lunchtime finally rolled around I drove to a grocery store. In the few minutes it took me to select and pay for some snacks, the sky had filled with fat flakes and the roads were thick with slush. As I made my way back to the board, I came upon a mail delivery truck parked in the road.  Japanese roads often don't have shoulders, so the cars will just pull over as far as possible (which isn't far), and put on their hazards. It happens all the time; I'm used to it. So I pulled into the opposite lane to pass the truck...and my wheels got caught in the slush, forcing me towards the sidewalk. I corrected, only mildly startled; but then my rear wheels hit a patch of ice and swung out around me,  ploughing the nose of my car straight into the delivery truck's gas tank.  I immediately jumped out and made profuse, bilingual apologies as the gas tank started leaking all over the road. I expected to endure rage and abuse from my victim (and frankly felt that I deserved it), but the driver calmly stepped over to the side of the road and began a barrage of phone calls to the police, fire station, my company, and the board of education. Then he wordlessly folded up a spare towel from his truck and laid it gently across my head, to shelter me from the driving snow.

Soon the area was flooded with people and my story was repeated several times, but never with the stern disapproval I expected.  Everyone was sympathetic, no blame was placed, messes were tidied and reports were filed. Several co-workers flocked to the area, navigating the thick snow in high heels and business suits; and when all the work was finished they brought me back to the board and let me sit awhile with a hot cup of water.I had barely finished it when the alarms started.


Everyone's cell phones were suddenly going berserk, even the ones that had been set to silent mode. I flipped mine open and just had time to read the screen--"Earthquake"--before I felt the first rolling pitch. Earthquakes don't feel like I expected, or at least this one didn't. I expected shaking and rattling, the earth cracking at my feet and chunks of ceiling raining down. Instead I felt like the concrete had transformed into a restless ocean, heaving unexpectedly. It immediately made me feel sick to my stomach, like when you step off a treadmill too quickly and your body can't adjust to the sudden lack of movement--only I guess this was the reverse.  Everyone took it pretty lightly at first. We're used to tiny quakes that last 2-3 seconds and do nothing worse than make us reconsider lunch. But this time the rolling lasted 2-3 minutes, and everyone quickly evacuated the building.  We ended up evacuating several times, always lured back to the warmth of the building only to feel the ground reeling under our feet yet again--there were countless aftershocks.  But we went inside long enough to turn on the news and saw that what was just a tremble for us was a devastating collapse for others. We saw the tsunami, the debris, the floating houses (some on fire). The waves of cars, tumbling over each other. The roaring oil refinery, burning like the pits of hell.

Sendai, Iwate, and Chiba. The areas that, for some reason, received the full fury of the earthquake and its resulting tsunami. The areas with reported death tolls mounting hourly, well into the hundreds by now. The areas that are all flame and debris. Areas within driving distance of me.

Despite all my traveling, I have not made all that many friends throughout Japan. My close ones are just that, emotionally AND physically: close enough that the downed phone lines are no obstacle when we check on each other. But through some quirk of fate--one of those twisted moments when reality reminds you how much it loves to mess around--I happen to have two close friends who are not within my reach.

Because they are in Sendai and Chiba.

Winter

There’s so much to say and so little time to say it—I don’t think I’ve been this busy since finals week in college.  I’d imagined that my social calendar would lighten during the winter, leaving me plenty of time for internet surfing and dubious crafting projects. But the people of this area, fortified by sweetened boiled sake and roasted rice balls, have put on a parade of festivals that have been frankly unbeatable!

Kaminoyama’s Kasedori Festival

Once a year, to thank the nature gods for preventing fires and to encourage them to keep it up, the residents of nearby Kaminoyama get together to dance naked in the snow. 

Well, that’s not strictly accurate: they actually get together to wear massive straw cones that cover them from head to knees (with small eye slits and arm holes as half-hearted nods to practicality), then dance in the snow while people throw ice water at them. A fellow ALT, Isaac, took part and grinned enthusiastically the whole way through the one-footed hopping, partner-whirling, and rhythmic shouting of, “KA! KA! KA!” The rest of us watched just as enthusiastically from the sides, noting the taped man-nipples (to protect from the very real danger of straw chafing) and cheering on Miss Kaminoyama, the chief iced water dispenser.  We sampled some of the aforementioned sweet sake and posed with some samurai, and tried to work out how the traditional straw getups might have practical in any sense. They made their wearers look like the animated brooms from “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” portion of Fantasia, if those brooms had liked to hop in unison and shake water off on the unwary.

"Ka! Ka! Cankles!"

The Snow Monsters

There is a mountain nearby called Zao, famous for its resorts and sheer immenseness. But it’s most famous for a unique phenomenon, termed the “snow monsters.” 

Zao gets a lot of wind and a lot a lot of snow. The combination sheaths the trees in a thick coating of snow, obscuring their original shape completely. The results resemble titanic sea anemones, crouched over a barren sea floor.  I first saw them as my friends and I rode a gondola to the peak.  It was such a cold night that we had to scrape the windows with our nails every few minutes to free them from frost.  The gondola swayed in the constant wind, and again I was struck by how cold and darkness transform a landscape into a world as inhospitable as the black spaces between stars. It was impossible to look anywhere but down, and my only comfort was that if we fell I would probably die by knocking myself out on the ceiling long before the gondola finished the long descent to the ground below. My sense of alienation only increased when I saw the first snow monster, lit up from below by white and blue lights; but the fear gave way to fascination.  

There was nothing all that spectacular about the details of that single snow monster—other than the fact that I’d never seen such a tall, tubular snow formation before. But the cumulative effect of all of them was something else entirely. They were glaring white, casting rainbows across their own shadows in a natural prismatic effect.  And they were EVERYWHERE, rising in colonies all across the mountain. If they had really been monsters or animals I would have been terrified at the sheer number; even knowing that they were only frozen evergreens did nothing to diminish the slightly sinister effect of their hunched shapes.  We weren’t allowed to walk through them, restricted to taking pictures from the fringes. But I imagine a stroll through the snow monsters’ ranks would have felt something like walking on a different planet, surrounded by a strange and glaring beauty.

Nakatsugawa Snow Festival

Nakatsugawa is a small village, tucked away in the mountains at the end of a jade river and a slender road. I teach at their combined elementary/middle school, composed of a grand total of 8 students in all.  The people of this village are full of the most “fighting spirit” I’ve yet encountered. During the summer sports festival I watched grandmas in their 80’s run relays. That would have been amazing enough, but these were country women, the end results of lifetimes of hard labor. This meant they were running with their backs at 90 degree angles ; it was easier for them to watch the dirt passing their feet than it was to crane their necks to see where they were going—and yet I am not ashamed to say I think I would have lost to them, had I participated.

As you may have guessed, winter has not fazed these people in the slightest. For their snow festival they constructed five sculptures entirely from snow, each at least 10 feet tall: a shishi (remember the lion/dragon thing from the summer festivals?), a trio of characters from a popular kids show, a rabbit, a temple, and a bear with a fish in its mouth.  Not satisfied with that, they also built a 15-25 ft. tall snow palace and a stage, where my kids performed a traditional dance and all the teachers did a comedy routine (which somehow involved Bill and Hillary Clinton, a song  and dance, and a copious amount of cross-dressing).  There was also a pyramid stocked with giant black tubes for sledding ,and a sacrificial tree strapped with bundles of straw that  later went up in flames as we danced around it. At every turn there was something that have I have never seen before nor ever expect to see again! 

But my favorite part by far was also the least expected: the paper lanterns. These were not the small, practical kind meant to light our way. These were miniature hot air balloons, meant to rise into the sky and drift across the country—and they were made of nothing but heavy paper and glue. The paper had been decorated by my students and fellow teachers. There were tributes to the rabbit (this year’s zodiac) and several bakemono, including Gegege no Kitaro and the kappa. The sheer skill and beauty of it all was breathtaking—that my students, none of which are above 15 years old, were able to create such beautiful art on such a giant scale and then fashion an airtight, viable balloon from the paper is a thought that still leaves me reeling.

The launching was a spectacle I’ll never forget. Some villagers would hold the paper bag carefully while others attached some sort of burning orb to a wire harness at the bottom. The paper slowly bulged with hot air until it was finally released, rising erratically into the night sky until its impressive glow was reduced to a firefly’s.  Lantern after lantern was sent into the rising wind, forming a long string of blazing lights twisting over the snow-covered rice fields. I couldn’t take my eyes from them; I would have not have missed a second of that spectacle for anything. But even as I basked in one of the most blissful states I’ve ever achieved, I was haunted by a recurring thought.

How can I ever leave this?