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.
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