May 21–25蚕起食桑 Kaiko okite kuwa o hamu - Silkworms start feasting on mulberry leaves
May 26–30紅花栄 Benibana saka - Safflowers bloom
May 31–June 5麦秋至 Mugi no toki itaru - Wheat ripens and is harvested
Another one of the the set of four hand-painted spring-themed postcards okasan gave me before Golden Week.
Here in Japan, a lot of things seem inherently backwards to us non-natives. It's like a world in reverse. While most ex-pats eventually become accustomed to this state of affairs, I wonder how many never really get used to it?
We were mulling this over between supermarkets this afternoon, and Mina brought up a few very good examples that I'd somehow completely overlooked. In Japan, as the driver sits on the right, the right lane of traffic becomes the left, and vice-versa. Like in Europe. Drivers here also tend to back into parking spots, as opposed to driving forward into them. This is an example of Japanese reverse-ism that I'd never noticed. She figures the reason for this is that your garden variety North American uses his/her 'spacious car trunk' frequently, and that it's just easier to get at if the car is parked front first, while here in Japan, a lot of people drive small hatchbacks, and just chuck their shopping in the back seat.
Makes perfect sense.
In these parts, books and magazines are bound on the right. Text is traditionally written horizontally, from right to left. In addition, the grammatical structure of the language is essentially the reverse of what we're familiar with in English.
For instance - something like, "the woman wearing a blouse made in Italy" translated into Japanese comes out,
"Itariasei no burausu o kita josei", which translated verbatim back into English reads,
"Italy in/at made blouse wearing woman". It's perfectly reversed.
It could be said that in order for an outsider to really understand and be understood, one has to essentially learn how to think and communicate...backwards. I thought that being dyslexic might actually prove to be advantageous in this scenario. That it might help to grease my already hopelessly backward cogs and wheels of comprehension.
No such luck.
Speaking of reversals - on this magical archipelago, schools of every description start up in April, as opposed to September. While students in most of the world are getting close to packing it in for the year - or graduating - their Japanese counterparts are starting new terms.
Only two other countries start their academic years in April. India and Pakistan.
In Japan, all formal commencement occurs in tandem with the beginning of the fiscal year (which runs from April 1st to March 31st). The reasoning for this is a bit obscure. While the standardization of the current April-March system can be traced back to the Meiji-era 'Elementary School Law' (1900), there appears to be no definitive record as to where the idea originated.
Perhaps the architect of said scheme simply thought of everything in terms of the natural world; that spring should be the logical starting point for all new endeavours, be they economic or academic. Maybe it simply has to do with tidy and linear book keeping? Either way, it goes without saying that Japan at the turn of the last century was quite a bit different to what it is today. Well, mostly, anyways.
Of course, problems arise for native students wishing to transfer to schools outside of Japan in a timely manner...unless they aim to study in India.
Or Pakistan.
It's curious that with all the lip service the men in grey over in Tokyo have been paying to the importance of globalization in recent years, it doesn't seem like there's been any serious consideration given to bringing the start of the Japanese academic year in line with broader international standards.
Perhaps there's a fear that such a move might encourage an exodus of J-students to foreign colleges and universities, effecting a sort of domestic 'brain drain'? Maybe they're afraid that a lot of them won't come back - or worse still - they'll return 'messed up', with heads full of 'bad' (read: foreign) ideas, and never be able to reintegrate.
It seems the prevailing opinion in these parts still holds that the 'outside world' needs to change to fit in with the way that things are done over here, not vice-versa. After all, the sun kissed children of Amaterasu omikami are of divine lineage - delicate and pure, and never in the wrong.
The Sun Goddess Amaterasu omikami - mother of the nation.
If there's one thing that the Japanese love more than anything, it's upholding the status quo. At all costs.
On April 19th, I started my 27th term over at Mr. Insecthead's kindergarten.
I'm a long way from where I started back in April, 1995. I was a young. Twenty eight, in a foreign country and newly married. Everything was fresh and exciting. It was all a big adventure. Like a lot people that age, I didn't think too much about the future. I certainly never entertained the thought that I'd be sitting here trying to make sense of it all twenty six years later.
The cast of characters that I started out with in those days are all gone.
I think the last time I saw Mme Lord Vader was close to sixteen years ago - probably around the time we finalized our divorce. Mina seems to recall her coming over here with her then five year old daughter, and feeding the kid a donut; but I'm not sure if that was just before or after we'd settled our paperwork. She emailed me last year when her mother passed away. She was upset that she hadn't been able to come out to Nagoya to spend any time with her due to the pandemic, and a ban on visitors at the longterm care facility her mom had been at since her father passed way several years before. Though a long while had passed, she said that her mother still occasionally asked what had become of me. I felt bad about losing touch; but knew that it was really in everyone's best interests that I made a clean break when everything wound down between the two of us.
Life goes on, as they say.
Her parents were good people; I have fond memories of them both. I remember mid-mornings, sitting with her mother in their small kitchen, laughing with her as she cracked up over my latest awkward blunders. She'd laugh at me in much the same way my Mum back in Canada would. It was contagious, and I couldn't help but laugh with her. She was completely without pretense. How she begot a piece of work like Mme Lord Vader is one of nature's great mysteries. Her passing was very sad news.
When I tried to e-mail the Mme to wish her a happy birthday a few months later, my message bounced.
Then there were my 'great friends' in the Nagoya heavy metal band - the one I'd been such a fan of back in art school.
We all became fast friends during my first visit to Deadbeat City in 1992. One thing led to another, and in 1995 they asked me to take up the mantle of lyricist for their upcoming album. I was thrilled, and the finished product was a great success.
The opening track from that first album I worked on as lyricist, back in 1995.
I ended up working closely with them for the next seventeen years, writing five more albums, and a handful singles.
We were like brothers until things started going south around 2008. Without digging too deep into the gory details, let's just say that all the usual cliches and underhanded stuff that happens in rock bands when there's any amount of money at play finally happened here.
For the band's 20th anniversary, they'd decided to dig deep, and invite their problematic former vocalist back for a special run of shows. He'd walked out on the band a decade before, forcing them to scuttle an album and tour...very nearly ending their career. There had been a lot of bad blood, and in the intervening years, we'd had to essentially rebuild the band from the ground up, as a three piece. It had been a long road back; but things were going well. There was a new major label deal, and the latest album had been well received.
After some initial hesitation, the former vocalist accepted their invitation, and despite some misgivings within the band, the 'special anniversary shows' went down well. The audience reaction was overwhelmingly positive, and what had started out as a strictly temporary arrangement gradually became permanent. Never under estimate the crowd drawing power of nostalgia.
Within fairly short order, they were under new management, and had a fresh record deal in hand. Money, money. There was now going to be a reunion album and full tour. It would be like the past ten years had never happened.
While it all seemed very exciting, I had a sinking feeling. Changes were afoot.
The smell of money in the air does funny things to people. It was around this time that I was lured into a 'casual situation' over drinks, and carelessly signed a paper that I really shouldn't have. It was done up in Japanese, and I really should have taken the time to have it translated by a third party. I hadn't even had the wherewithal to get a copy for my records.
My bad.
*(Several years ago, as I was attempting to put my past business affairs in order, I acquired a copy that document, and Mina translated it. I learned that I had signed away all rights to claim any share of past or future royalties related to the considerable body of work I'd done with the band. The initial payments that I'd received upon completion of each group of songs would now be considered full and final payment for the all of work concerned. I'd suspected as much.)
To add insult to injury, it became clear that I had been set up, and that it had been facilitated by someone that I'd trusted implicitly.
By 2013 I finally ended up getting the proverbial 'shit-end of the stick' - in every way possible.
Halfway through writing material for the follow-up to their successful reunion album, I was quite suddenly terminated. While there would be no proper explanation given, it was implied that it had been 'the vocalist's idea'...though I suspect their 'new management' made the decision to cut me loose.
The three stooges were all suddenly very evasive. No one would take responsibility, or admit to knowing anything. They all pointed to the recently returned vocalist as being the protagonist. When confronted, he asserted that it wasn't him per se; insisted it was 'a group decision'. When I took this back to Larry, Curly and Moe, they all denied it.
Someone was lying...or they were all lying.
Either way, I'm a gaijin - and as such, expendable. For whatever reasons, my utility to the band had run its course. As there were to be no more face-to-face meetings, I emailed the stooge responsible for all the band's business liaisons with the new management, and demanded that I at least be paid for the seven sets of lyrics that I'd completed. Of course, I wasn't offered a great deal of money, but what I did get was promptly deposited into my bank account.
I attempted to put it all behind me and move forward; but there had been too much damage done to maintain those friendships.
Mina went from simply 'not trusting' to absolutely despising them.
I finished some final work that I'd promised to contribute to their bass player's vanity project, then hung it up. He never even offered to pay me. Looking back, I don't know why I bothered. It had become increasingly obvious that I was just being used.
It was all very hurtful and disappointing.
Around seven years ago, I finally cut all ties with that entire scene.
As for Mr. Insecthead's kindergarten, it 's always been my number one side job. I even managed a minor promotion early on, getting a small raise and an extra day added. It remains the best paying of all the classes I've ever done...a relic from that lost era when English teaching jobs in this country could make the right person in the right place an awful lot of money for very little time spent.
Of course, the catch over there has always been in the sheer number of students that I'm tasked with finding a way to 'teach' in that given hour. Forty to fifty per group. Young kids, too. Three to fives.
"How on earth was I going to pull this off?"
Of course, I'd taught English to children before. Back at the first eikaiwa (English school) I worked at in Amagasaki, I'd taught mostly elementary to junior high school age students in groups of six to eight. They used text books, and all I really had to do was act as a sort of 'master of ceremonies' or de-facto 'lion tamer' if things started to go sideways. With the exception of a few of the junior high school boys testing my limits and being disruptive my first week in, it wasn't much of a challenge. Forty five minutes per session, four or five sessions an evening, and done.
I think I was supposed to be getting paid ¥2500 per hour...but it somehow came out closer to ¥2000 after they'd deducted 'taxes'. Curious. I was on a tourist visa, and working 'under the table'. Taxes? They were simply pocketing a nice chunk of my promised take home, because they could. They'd remind me as much every two weeks, when I'd pick up my envelope of cash from the secretary.
Fast forward five years.
My initial period over at Mr. Insecthead's was pretty stressful. I remember trying out different things. Whatever songs or games that I could recall from when I was a kid that age...anything to fill the time. 'Bingo'. The 'hokey-pokey' - you name it, I likely gave it a go. There wasn't any internet back in those days, either...at least, not that I had any access to. Now it's so easy to search out material when you're at a loss for something to do. Back then, it was a lot of trial and error, or asking other gaijin friends what they were doing, and what they thought worked well. I bought sets of flashcards, and attempted to make my own visual aids and cue cards at home.
At one point I even tried incorporating some Sesame Street hand puppets that Mme Lord Vader's niece had abandoned at our place. I can't remember how that went over; only that it was relatively short lived. It turns out that I'm not much of a ventriloquist.
My second year in, I lucked into a really great dubbed tape of some action-oriented children's songs from an Australian woman that a mutual gaijin friend used to bring out drinking with us occasionally. That tape was a life saver - and proved to be a big hit with the five year olds. It also became the starting point from which I cobbled together a repertoire of things that I'd tried and had gone over well enough to polish up and integrate into what became a nascent 'routine'.
Twenty-five years on, I still use a cd-r transfer of that very same cassette.
At a certain point, I also learned how to relax, and focus less on trying to teach...and more on simply providing the kids with an entertaining 'English' interlude. The more you try to marshal kids that age into doing something, the more they resist. Children bore easily. They don't give a shit about your 'agenda'. They wanna have fun.
I started to see a distinct similarity between the situation I was walking into in front of all those kids, and my years on stage fronting punk rock bands. While the material is different, the dynamic is almost the same. After a time, I started treating the classes more like 'gigs' or TV game shows...but for a much younger audience. Things need to be flexible. The material has to be played fast and loose enough to be fun, but not to the point that it dissolves into a totally un-structured mess. Like a hall full of punters, they aren't too interested in being challenged...so repetition and familiarity are your allies. While they're waiting for the 'greatest hits', they also appreciate a little bit of fresh material every now and again - just not too much. Mostly, they want to be engaged. To laugh, shout and move around. It's a bit like controlled chaos. Every day is a little different, too. Some gigs go over better than others. In order to effectively emcee one of these affairs, one needs to become rather adept at 'reading the room'. Always have more than one plan...and be ready to switch tracks any time if the fish aren't biting.
What flops on Tuesday may be a hit on Friday.
I've had some great groups over the years. Bright, energetic and funny. Others have been pretty tough nuts to crack. Each collection of individuals has a different chemistry. The kid's regular Japanese teachers can make a big difference, too. Some connect well with their groups, while others seem aloof or disinterested. Kids can tell the difference. The groups with the better teachers are invariably way easier to work with.
Over my 26 years, I've seen a lot of Japanese teachers come and go. It's a hard job with long hours; the ones that stick it out have my respect. The girls there usually have a limited shelf life, mostly starting in their early twenties, and working an average of five or six years, until they get married. March is quitting season, and for the last two years, I've had a a few of the retiring teachers (usually between the ripe old ages of 28 and 30) come and tell that they're leaving after our last day of classes together. I've been kind of taken aback, because in my first 24 years over there, no one ever bothered. Teachers would simply fade out. Most of them still do.
Maybe attitudes have changed over the last quarter century?
I don't think that I've done anything specifically different. Regardless, it's kind of touching that they'd make that effort to say 'good-bye'. On March 18th - after the final morning of year 26 - the two girls that handled the five year old class were waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. My heart kind of sank, because I knew what was coming. One had been there for five years, and another for eight. They both announced that they were leaving to get married, and start new lives. It was hard to disguise my disappointment. I told them how sad I was to say good-bye. These two had made my job a lot easier, and really pulled the five year olds together. More than that, they weren't phonies. They were nice...and in my estimation, the last two good teachers left.
I tried for a short speech in my simplest, clearest English,
"You are my favourites. You're the best. Today is a sad day. Good luck, and congratulations!"
The shorter, younger one started to tear up. I leaned in and gave them the best 'COVID-safe' group hug I could manage, and bade them a final farewell.
The last class of March is always bittersweet. It's the final class for the five year olds. The end of a three year run, watching them go from toddlers to semi-formed individuals. In a group of fifty, there are always two or three kids that latch on to me. Sometimes they cry and get emotional on the last day. This year, everyone held it together.
At the end of the final 'gig', they always present me with a big handmade group project, with little notes attached to it with 'thank you' messages mostly scrawled in Japanese. This year's project was a giant construction paper cherry tree, with hand-made 'message' blossoms stuck all over it. Stuff like this is always touching and gratifying. I've yet to bring it home, as I had to ride my bike out there that morning, and I didn't want to risk damaging it. I'll wait for a morning that Mina drives me out to bring it home. These things are like treasures.
With all those warm fuzzies a month behind me, as I rode my bike out to do my first 'gig' of the new term on April 19th, I wondered who'd be filling those two vacant positions in the five year old class. I had no inkling that my 27th year out at Mr. Insecthead's was going to get off to a decidedly less than spectacular start.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back for season 27...enter Erratica, Long Covid, and Miss Bianca.
Kinder-Queen Geedorah rises.
...to be continued in The 72 Japanese Microseasons of my Discontent - Part 9 : 芒種 Bōshu (Grain beards and seeds)
With the Golden Week holiday a good shot to our stern and fading fast, we're already just a month shy of the mid-summer solstice. According to the ancient 72 season calendar, today marks the end of sub-season #21, Takenoko shōzu - Bamboo shoots sprout (May 15–20). As there aren't any stands of wild bamboo around the danchii, I can't really confirm the timing. I can say that this year has been an odd one. The weather has been unpredictable, and a bit cooler than it usually is by late May.
Case in point - we still haven't packed up the gas heater in our living room. I usually unplug it and stow it at the bottom of our bedroom futon closet just before the spring holidays. We actually used it for an hour yesterday evening.
We were lucky with Golden Week this year. It was mostly sunny and warm. We had okasan the first weekend, and everything went off without a hitch. She managed another solid 'C'. Mid-week, we drove out to Ena and stayed one night with Mayumi and okasan at Mayumi's second house. Really beautiful, rural setting. Quiet and bucolic.
Okasan was in a shit mood; apart from coming out to eat, she watched TV and skulked in the back bedroom for most of the time we were there.
Apparently Mayumi's boss had told her that she'd be getting an additional week's paid leave this year - as a kind of bonus for her outstanding job performance. Naturally, she wanted to share the good news, and the old lady seized on it.
The only way that Mayumi can feel comfortable taking a short trip is if she knows that okasan is being properly taken care of. As we're not in any position to host her for a week straight, and she hates Fat Wife, Mayumi's only alternative would be to farm her out to one of mother's day-service places for what they call a 'short stay'. Think of it as a kind of 'pet hotel' program for senior citizens. For five or six days she's housed, fed, watered, and free to socialize and take part in activities with other people her age.
Of course, she wants no part of it.
In her mind, it's simply the first step in a larger, nefarious plan to shuffle her out of her room at Mayumi's, and exile her to some type of sanatorium for the invalid and unwanted. Convincing her otherwise is the hardest of hard sells. As such, until okasan has a sudden change of heart, it doesn't look like Mayumi will be going anywhere - that is, unless she wants to pack the old lady along with her.
On a happier note, Mina and I had a lovely week. It was nice to get out of town for a day and a night. We got out on our bikes and did a couple of nice rides to some local sightseeing spots. Quality time. We even managed to take in the latest Marvel tentpole blockbuster on the last Friday afternoon - only our second such foray in the last two years. I could have done with at least another week, it was over so fast. On another happy note, we also managed to dodge any pesky COVID infections that may have been lurking in wait for the careless or unsuspecting. That's a major win. Not everyone in these parts was so lucky. As predicted, the infection numbers post-Golden Week were almost triple those of the week before.
The pandemic doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
As Golden Week drew to a close, the clouds moved in and we were treated to a week of dour, rainy weather that could have easily passed for rainy season, were it not for the March-like chill in the air. With the weekend came our turn to host okasan for another two days and a night. Fortunately, the afternoon of Saturday, March 14th was idyllic and sunny. It worked as a nice counter-balance to the old lady's mood, which was dark, moody and selfish.
That theme persisted until Mina drove her back early Sunday evening.
As far as her bi-weekly report card this time around, she broke her winning streak of straight 'C's and landed her first solid 'D' in a few months. It was bound to happen.
Sigh.
That's about all we have in the story and yarn tickle-trunk for the moment. Two weeks henceforth, I'll be back to unspool the final bit of our Mr. Insecthead's Kindergarten serial, along with whatever else seems pertinent and timely. Until then, you'd do well to remember that,
"No matter where you go, there you are".
There, and nowhere else.
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