Monday, December 24, 2007

Bad Santa, Happy Hanukkah, Textbook Ranting, I Hate Paul Harvey and Miss You All


One of the supporters that I know from my trips to the elementary schools asked me to play Santa at a Christmas party. I was pumped. Of course the party was bright and early on a Sunday morning following a lantern festival that I thoroughly enjoyed and in the process got slightly drunk at. I didn't know what was going on half the time, had no script and just kind of went in the direction they pointed me. Made it through the party and my friend, the supporter lady who invited me, had me over to her house for lunch. She has three little kids who are fun, but really loud and the party and activity continued back at their house. I got to take off the Santa suit before I ate. After lunch I sat down on the couch (a rarity in Japanese houses) and ended up passing out for two hours. The mom loved it though, cause the kids finally shut up while I was sleeping so as not to disturb the guest.


I was also tasked with giving a lesson about Hanukkah for the students at my Junior High School. At this point I've figured out that these lessons are more about satisfying my boss than teaching the students. I wish I had some pictures of the lessons cause I'm sure Baba and Zayda would've gotten a kick out of some of the flashcards and chalk-board-work. I taught them about the temple and how it was destroyed and how there was only enough oil for one day but.......OH MY GOD.....A MIRACLE...... the oil lasted for eight days!!! This was a tough sell to 30+ Japanese 13 year olds who were waiting for the lunch bell to ring. I introduced them to latkes, the Star of David and dreidels and feel confident that not one of them retained one bit of the lesson. I, and more importantly, my boss, enjoyed it though.


In a related story - I've got to share with you how awful the English textbooks at my school are. I believe they are sanctioned statewide, so the Board of Educations decides on a textbook and every school in the state (prefecture) must abide. It is asinine. I can't imagine what English teacher would have A: formulated such lesson plans and B: given this book the green light. With as much emphasis as they put on the importance of learning English here, they sure don't put much thought into it. I'm going to attempt to quote one of the most recent lessons we had to teach to our second graders (12 and 13 year-olds). It was about a blind half-Japanese, half-Mexican-American opera singer. The way these lessons go is there is a story in the text that we are to teach the students. We teach them by practicing the select vocabulary words out loud together using flashcards and then read and repeat the passage from the book in the same manner. Teacher (me) first and students repeat. For this lesson the passage began with something like this: "Why did my grandmother die? I hate my mother and father. I want to die too." Keep in mind that my role is to be energetic and read these passages as a model and keep the students interested in learning English. So I had a little bit of trouble keeping the smile on for this one. Also keep in mind that teenage suicide is a huge problem in Japan due to the pressures put on kids at such a young age. Junior High is like high school in the states where they have to take entrance exams and apply to get into the high school of their choice - the high schools vary in educational quality and prestige and if one wants to get into a good college (which translates into getting a good job), one must be in a good high school and if one wants to get into a good high school, one must score high on these tests and be accepted. In addition to all of this, they have club activities (basketball, orchestra, brass band, tennis, baseball, ping-pong...etc.) which they practice 7-days a week, before school and after school, all year round. On top of that, some students, after they finish up with their club activity at about 7pm, they go straight to their "Cram Schools" which are private tutors or specialized classes that usually take them to about 10 or 11pm. So they've got a lot on their plates. And with the increasing levels of Japanese teenage suicide rates these days, I don't know who in their right mind would think: "Hmmm, how should we start lesson #14? Oh, I know, 'Why did my grandmother die? I hate my mother and father. I want to die too.' Ok, next line." Fortunately half the class was sleeping during this lesson so hopefully we won't have any fall out. It's ridiculous - the other teachers think it's crazy too - flashcards for words like "die" and "cancer." "Urinary Tract Infection", "overdose" and "rheumatism" must be high-school level vocab. Cancer was one from the third grade class - these kids can barely answer the question, 'How are you?' but they're getting fed the seven deadly sins cause it's in the textbook.


Every day I hear the rest of the story from Paul Harvey on the Armed Forces Network and his voice agitates my insides as if I were to shower in honey, take a dip in a pool of pollen and then jump on a bee hive. I fight the urge to puke in my mouth about once a week as a result of his trademark stammering and emphatic beat-you-over-the-head alliterations. Every now and then he gets the day off for his routine resuscitations or maybe scrabble contests. On these days he is substituted by Paul Harvey Jr. (apple doesn't fall far from the tree) and the reflux subsides a bit, but the taste remains. I can give a nice "Good day...?" impersonation, but it causes me to hock up some phlegm and keel over at the waist. Not a pretty sight, but accurate if I do say so myself.

A Message from my brother

Not entirely gaijin related content - but felt the need to forward. These videos gave me nightmares for three days and subdued the little holiday cheer I had in the tank. So, if you decide to view them, please be conscious of the timing in which you do so. They are very tough to stomach.

Hi everyone,

I don't often write politically or morally-motivated e-mails, and especially don't often (if ever) send them out in bulk. I respect people for the choices they make and respect their right to make those choices and am never really one to try to change people's minds or habits. But every now and again the activist in me wins out and I feel like a message is important enough to at least spread awareness on. I leave it to you to consider/evaluate/judge what you read or watch, although I still think it's important that people know about certain things.
Most of you probably know that last year I went vegetarian both as a way to get in better shape and because I had some moral qualms with eating meat - more importantly with how mainstream society goes about GETTING its meat. I'm not some psychopath PETA activist by any stretch of the imagination, but there is a lot to be said about common sense and common decency.
There are a lot of things that I strongly object to; the rise of radical Islam, the excess of corn in our diets, the lack of logical political activism in large societies, factory farming, and so on. I write this not to change anyone's mind, but again, to just increase awareness on something that really does mean a lot to me. So what is this all about, you ask?

The fur industry.

It's about to make headlines again (it happens about once every year or so) with PETA's new attacks on Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen for their fur-wearing habits. But like most of you probably would agree, things don't suddenly become important just because Fox News decides it's a slow news day. These are matters of human decency, if there is such a thing, or matters of humanity in and of itself, even, that have existed for centuries. Bad press, stupid activists and a general sense of indifference usually sweep these things under the rug until, as I mentioned, it's a slow news day, or until something big happens to keep it in the spotlight until something bigger happens to take its place (I know I used the word 'until' a lot in that sentence. Deal with it!)

I've spent more time than some would consider healthy, scouring Google for information on the fur industry. What have I found? It's really not as bad as some might make it out to be. Does this mean it's not bad? I'll let you decide. One should always keep in mind that for videos like the ones I'm about to show, there is a definite, biased, political purpose behind them. While the "good side" of the fur industry may be overlooked in such videos, you have to ask yourself "What good is a 'good side' when the 'bad side' is really this bad?"

PETA is famous for its shock publicity, and who can blame them? Shock publicity works at grabbing attention. Shock publicity sometimes means bad publicity, but some would argue that bad publicity is better than no publicity. At the expense of being labeled crackpots by 75% of the country, such shock advertising has the effect of at least snaring 25% of the remainder towards a cause that PETA believes in.
So I leave it to you to label PETA however you choose -- I know I'm not too fond of them or their tactics, myself. But factual video speaks for itself, regardless of underlying circumstance or political motivation.
Some decide to argue: "Well sure, they're showing you all of these terrible things... but they're not showing you all of the other stuff. It's propaganda; politically motivated."
When you watch a video of an American contractor being beheaded on Al-Jazeera, you are not being shown the decades of Palestinian/Islamic oppression. You are not being given the story behind the Israeli struggle with its neighbors, or the United States' involvement in the middle-east. All you are watching is a man having his head sawed off by a blunt blade, and spending 30+ seconds breathing through a halfway-opened neck. This speaks for itself in its savagery.
To that same degree, while I feel compassion for all creatures, I find it very difficult to reconcile the difference between clubbing and slowly skinning an animal alive, completely capable of feeling and expressing pain and terror, and the slow torture and beheading of Americans by the followers of radical Islam.

These humans and animals aren't crickets, whose nervous systems are governed by subtle, and largely instinctive reflex responses. These aren't amoebas, whose "desire" to stay alive stems from a vague chemical fingerprint that differentiates between bad and good chemicals. These are vertebrates, with complex central nervous systems. They are, with the exception of brain capacity, in every way shape and form on par with human beings.
I would not skin my dogs any sooner than I would skin one of my family or friends. There is nothing that sets a rabbit apart from a human being on this scale.

With that said, I'm going to link to two VERY upsetting videos which I have had the misfortune of watching over the last year or two. One represents the annual Harp Seal hunt in Canada. The other is more of a stock compilation of a fur farm in what I believe is Southeast Asia. Generally if you watch a video on the fur industry, it will include scenes from this second video. It's shocking and disturbing to say the very least.

I'm not sure how recent the scenes from the second video are, however you'd have to torture me and skin me alive to convince me that these are trends that no longer occur on a massive and nearly global scale.

The video of the Harp Seal hunt is as recent as 2006, and possibly 2007. These are things that happen every day. When I've shown people these videos, they usually stop watching them very quickly. Unseen and unheard, I don't think they have the impact that they should. We seem to often find ourselves in the position to choose to ignore such things -- whether it's about something like the fur industry, or something more important. If we ignore it or don't read about it, it's not our problem. I tend to disagree, though.

So... I'm going to link to these videos and leave it to your best judgment whether to watch them or not. They are incredibly graphic, incredibly disturbing, and they contain pictures and imagery that just may stay with you for the rest of your life. I think they are very important videos, because they match images to the hype, slogans and other propaganda. If it were up to me, every humane person with some semblance of a conscience would watch these videos. But I also understand that this is not a subject matter that most people ever associate (or want to associate) themselves with, and are truthfully not prepared to watch, so I very respectfully understand anyone's choice not to watch them, period. I simply hope that you do not fall into the pool of people who believe that by not watching something, it does not exist. The world doesn't just disappear when you close your eyes. Since you are all family and friends, I know that this isn't the case, and know that none of you are the kinds of pawns that I'm describing here. Anyways...

Do not watch them with children around. Do not share what happens in them with children. Watch them with a strong constitution and be open-minded. If 10 seconds from these videos is not enough to somehow impact what you think of the fur industry, then I think we may need to have words :)

Before I link them, I'll close with just a little bit more. I know there are bigger fish to fry in the world: Sudan, Iraq, Al Gore, etc. This is by no means the most important thing. But as a society if we only tackled the most important thing at any given time, nothing would ever get done, as we'd probably all be stuck, still trying to cure AIDS while children starve to death, wars are waged, and the rest of civilization crumbles. This happens to be something that holds personal value to me, as an animal lover and lover of life in general. And it's something that I think I can at least make some sort of impact on. Asking people to stop wearing fur is a lot easier than asking them to change what they eat, stop eating meat, petition factory farms, starve themselves, etc. This is something that I feel everyone can easily embrace, so I've chosen to write about it. Lastly, please don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm just on some bandwagon for cute and furry creatures. I think every animal deserves respect and compassion, whether they're sitting next to you reading this, bred for food, or swimming in the wrong place at the wrong time when a boat propeller hits them.

If you're still reading ... I'm impressed!

So here are the videos, courtesy of PETA. Pay no attention to the other PETA fluff that's on the sites, if there is any... this just happens to be where I could find the videos online. I'm happy to discuss stuff like this, so feel free to write back with thoughts, criticisms, opt-outs, and so on.

http://getactive.peta.org/campaign/trollsen_twins_peta2?qp_source=p2advgametroll&c=p22549
- Very graphic, very upsetting. Rated M for Mature

http://www.hsus.org/protect_seals.html
- Very graphic, but among the more mild of the Seal Hunt videos. More of a documentary, but still upsetting.

- Elliot
Disclaimer: Any spelling or grammatical mistakes were made intentionally to keep the readers on their toes.
Disclaimer 2: Unless you want to reply to everyone that I've sent this to, click "Reply" instead of "Reply to All" :)
Disclaimer 3: I've spent too much time writing these disclaimers and refuse to write any more.
Disclaimer 4: Except for this one.