The day before being Santa

I had a pre-Santa meeting today with one of the teachers from the kindergarten. We sat down together in the Teachers' Room and she showed me a kind of timetable for tomorrow all in Japanese. She explained that at 9:30 I should go to the kindergarten, go up some stairs and into a room. There, I will find a box of Santa clothes to get changed into. I then go down to the Hall and will be presented to two-hundred children who will have no idea that I am coming. I will greet them and then... the questions begin.

Just like in my school when a an ex-politician came to speak to us, the questions are all pre-arranged. She translated the first question for me:

“Why do you wear red clothes?”

She looked at me and I realised that I was supposed to provide my own answer.

“Because…it’s my favourite colour.”

She seemed pleased with that answer, so we moved on to the next question.

“How old are you?”

I decided that Santa should be old and mystical. “One hundred” I replied, she wrote it down.

“How many children do you have?”

I thought about this and decided, “I don’t have any children. I think of every child in the world as being like my children, from every country.” She smiled and I felt like a soppy fool.

“Why do you fly in a sleigh?”

Now this question is really hard, I couldn’t think of an answer. She suggested that it should be because Santa is really good at flying sleighs so we went with that.

“How many Santas are there?”

At this I wondered who had made up these questions, this is one of the most awkward questions kids can ask about Santa. I do wonder how parents get around the problem of kids going to shopping malls and seeing multiple Santas. I said, “I don’t know,” and she wrote it down as my answer, which actually I didn’t mean it to be. So there we go, Santa doesn’t know how many Santas there are, it doesn’t make any sense but they are only five so maybe they won’t notice.

Then it is just a small matter of giving out two hundred presents. Finally they sing for me and I make my grand exit.

Then, as translated from the timetable by my Japanese friend the teachers are performing a small play. This year they have chosen to perform The Little Match Girl. In case you are not familiar with the story, one synopsis is, “a young girl dies selling matches during the cold Winter.” It is one of the most depressing stories in the world. So tomorrow it will be, “Bye Santa, thanks for the joy and presents. Now let’s learn about a girl who froze to death.”

I feel like all my efforts tomorrow to spread cheer will be entirely in vein given the misery that will follow my hohohoing. I can only hope that the Japanese version of the story is more cheerful, like maybe she lights a match, Pikachu comes and lights his cigarette from it. Then he explains how only one match could ever light his cigarette and her match fits! Then they kiss, he turns into a prince, she yells “I choose you” and they get married. Sorry Hans Christian Anderson but that’s the story I want them to perform tomorrow. If a guy dressed as Pikachu doesn’t pass me in the corridor as I am leaving then I am not going to be happy.

Next week

My English to Japanese dictionary is very useful; in fact it is so incredibly and coincidentally useful that sometimes I wonder whether when I learn a new word from it causes some accompanying cosmic change in my life. It’s like the invisible lines of fate that we all travel down, which divide and split randomly with every decision and action we think we are making, suddenly lurch in new directions depending on what I read from my Oxford Beginner’s Japanese Dictionary.

For example, recently I looked up “as” and one of the examples was this:

サンタ　の　かっこう　を　しました。

Which means: “I was dressed as Santa.”

The next week I am sitting in the teacher’s room when the vice principal gets a call from the kindergarten my school is attached too. He calls me over to his desk and tells me that they want me to be Santa for them next Wednesday. He asks me if I would like to do it and I quickly go through the stages of shock, amusement, fear, indecision and finally that stage where you just say “ok” without really knowing what you are getting yourself into.

I asked him what I thought was a stupid question; whether the kindergarten would provide me with a costume. He said that he wasn’t sure. You can’t seriously expect someone to provide their own costume can you? It’s not like dressing up as a ghost or vampire for Halloween where you can kind of put together something vaguely right from regular clothes and then make some plastic teeth to top it off. Santa has some very specific requirements, like the curly white beard, for example, or the red hat with the white thing at the end.

The only person who wasn’t surprised when I told them what I have to do next week was Adam, the Canadian English teacher from another school I teach in. Apparently, he was Santa last year and said, “It’s like being a rockstar,” because of all the attention and advised me to, “Be careful, they will be trying to touch your butt.” When a kid punched me in the most painful place a month or two ago and I told Adam about this he said, “it goes with the territory.” He’s been teaching for years so is wise and sagely, but still I don’t see how getting punched by kids in the genital region is in the same territory as teaching English.

On Thursday of this week I was there when Adam was told, five minutes before the woman came with the costume for him to try on, that he would be dressing up as Santa on Tuesday. The costume they had ready for him had everything, Even Santa eyebrows which where about two inches long and would blind you if it was windy.

I find myself wondering, what if the kids ask me questions or yell things out to me in Japanese, expecting me to answer? Chances are I won’t be able to understand them so what am I supposed to do? Do I explain, “Sorry kids, Santa doesn’t speak Japanese,” or do I just smile and hohoho all day. I hope they don’t do the whole Santa’s grotto thing and let them sit on my knee. Firstly, I have no idea how to say, “So sonny, what do you want from Santa this Christmas?” in Japanese and secondly it would increase my vulnerability to genital attacks.

Oh the things I do for money.

School Festival

Last week was Tomioka School Festival, an event where all the classes in years four, five and six put on something special in their class. For example, this was the festival map:

There were ghost houses, game centres, pirate goings on, performances and things I only pretended to understand.

This is one of the game centres from a year five class.

The idea was you had to throw a large rolled up papier-mâché thing and hit a number to get points. The more pointsyou got, the better the origami something-or-other you could walk away with.

In another game centre there was a search in the load of shredded paper game. I wasn’t sure what we were searching for as I never found it.

Then the most innovative game I saw, was this.

You know those arcade games where you hit the heads of moles with a hammer when they briefly pop out of their holes. These kids had recreated this game with several kids sitting below a large cardboard enclosure with holes cut into the top. They stuck out different coloured papier-mâché things that you hit with a plastic hammer. The hammer was of the squeaky kind so that whenever you hit something it made a sound and allowed someone to could keep score. Here is a video of it.

There were two ghost houses, the first was Death Hand.

All the windows to the classroom had been blacked up to make it as dark and mysterious as possible. Queing up outside you had no idea what was within, which made some of the younger kids quite nervous. Inside there turned out to be a long corridor made from hanging material in which every now and then kids would randomly reach out and grab you, or spray water in your face.

The other haunted house was next-door and was far more sinister. In the queue outside was the following headless Barbie doll.

Sitting in a window too was this.

First years and second years kept running out of the classroom in sheer terror but for me the experience was less scary, both because of my age and my height. These things are designed for small people who don’t see the backstage crew standing over the hanging material walls with scary props to shove in your face. I think also, me being a teacher and all, they didn’t put on as scary a show as normal. For example, at the end of the corridor there was a kid sitting at a desk and I stood waiting for him to do something frightening. He didn’t, so I asked him, “Are you a scary person” and he just said, “yes.”

A year five class were running a Pirate room. On entering someone sat you down on a wheelie chair and pushed you around the room. The first game involved throwing cardboard crosses through a big cardboard skull. Then you had to use a torch to find as many Jack Sparrows as you could in the dark. Finally there was a tunnel thing to crawl through which was not designed for adults, I bruised my knee and broke my name badge trying to squeeze through it, it was unnervingly like being born. I got through though, and earned my folded paper bounty to put on my desk, or enjoy shredding.

Buses

Everyday I wake up at 6:40, catch a bus at 7:45, arrive at Shin Urayasu train station at 8:00 and then walk the 15 minutes to school. I say this not to aid my stalker but to set the scene for just when the following two events happened.

As I am walking to school from the station I have twice now seen a strange thing written on a passing bus. In Japan the buses have their destination written on the front in Japanese and then beneath in English letters. A few weeks ago I saw a bus with no one but the driver onboard heading to, "Merry Christmas," which I thought was nice.

Yesterday though I saw a bus which said it was heading simply, "Forward." This certainly has to be one of the vaguest things you could possibly write as the destination of a bus. There is nowhere around here with that name so I can only guess that if you want to go forwards in life but with no particular destination in mind then this is the bus for you. Perhaps this is a new service for people with nowhere particlar to go, depressed people could get the "Somewhere happy," bus and the claustraphobia and arachnaphobia sufferers could go on a day trip together on the "Open and spider free place" bus.

じしん の れんしゅう

It was break time in school and I was walking back to the Teacher’s Room when I met one of the other teachers in the corridor. “Jishin,” she said to me enthusiastically. This surprised me as jishin means earthquake. “Now?” I asked her, she said yes, but then explained that it was just a practice earthquake. At that precise moment all the children, you see, should have been under their desks. I asked her what the staff should be doing and she said we should be checking that the children were under their desks.

We parted ways and I continued down the corridor. I passed a few classrooms with children diligently cowering under furniture. Then some kids came out into the corridor and said, “Nick sensei,” to me, I went over and asked them about earthquake practice. They said, “Owata,” which meant it had finished. I had no idea how they knew that, but I continued on my way.

When I got to the Teacher’s Room the Vice Principal was looking very serious and standing over the microphone for the school’s tanoy system. There were two other teachers in the room and they gestured to me that I should get under my desk. I did so and the vice principal started talking into the tanoy to tell everyone it was earthquake time again.

There was a CD player attached to the tanoy system by a long wire and after the Vice Principal had finished talking he pressed play. The CD was of an earthquake; it was the deep rumbling sound of the ground moving, with sounds of things crashing, glass breaking and buildings straining thrown in too. The tanoy system was turned up very loud and I could almost feel the ground shaking beneath me.

The Vice Principal was holding a stopwatch that he kept checking; there must be some government standard for how long an earthquake should last for. It was pretty uncomfortable sitting underneath my desk as there is a large bar preventing any from getting more than halfway under. I really would have thought desks in Japan would be more getting-underneath friendly as earthquakes or so common. I wonder if Ikea here sells desks and tables specifically good for earthquake protection, like a family size one with hooks to hang up your torch and wind-up radio.

After a minute the earthquake died down and the Vice Principal gave the all clear. Everyone got back on their feet and dusted off their trousers. I feel slightly more afraid of earthquakes now, but only because of the uncomfortable squatting on a dusty floor I know will accompany them.

Translating jokes

Have you ever wanted to put a joke into one of these Internet translators, translate it to another language and then back into English?

No me neither.

But I did. And here are the results.

First I had to decide on a test joke, one that should be relatively simple and well known to everyone. It wasn’t hard to decide.

Test Joke:

My dog has no nose.
How does it smell?
Awful.

We could argue over whether it should be, “My dog’s got no nose,” rather than, “has no nose,” all day. Let’s not.

The results were generally good, for example most of the European languages like German and Greek kept the meaning entirely and just added a few words here and there.

Greek

My dog does not have no nose.
How it smells?
Horrible.

Italian had a bit of trouble at the end.

My dog does not have nose.
How it feels l'odore of?
Terrible.

Spanish was rather optimistic.

My dog does not have any nose.
How it smells?
Tremendous

Moving away from European languages, Russian translated almost perfectly.

My dog has no nose.
How it does smell?
Awful.

Japanese didn’t go so well.

There is no nose in my dog.
How does smell do that?
It is terrible.

Chinese did well till the end.

My dog does not have the nose.
How does it smell?
Fearful.

And finally, Korean.

To my dog there is not a nose.
It sniff how?
It was severe.

Why not try it yourself, the translator I used is Yahoo Babel Fish at

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/?fr=bf-res

Or suggest a joke to me and I'll d0 all the exhausting hard labour of clicking for you.

Ok I need to go rest my right index finger.

First week of Nick sensei

The first full day of the term was the Wednesday and so this was the day I got to learn the ways of the school lunch. The food ranges from fish, rice, spaghetti, grapes, a small omelette thing, bread, oranges, sausages, hamburgers, vegetables and sometimes a scary meal of small whole fish complete with heads and eyes.

It’s a complicated business. Everyday I eat with a different class and normally one of two things happens. Either, the teacher knows that I am going to eat with them and has already decided which group of kids I will sit with. Or, the teacher is surprised by my arrival and the kids start arguing over where I should sit and I stand awkwardly hoping they won’t ask me to decide.

At the end of lunch, and after everyone has said “gochisosamadesita” which means something like “that was yummy thanks,” the clearing away begins. The children line up and scrape their leftovers into metal boxes laid out at the front of the classroom. Each kind of food has a different box so that meat and vegetables and so on don’t mix. I have no idea why they do this. I have a horrible feeling that today’s food is partly yesterday leftovers.

The teachers, however, have to carry their trays back down to the Teacher’s Room and do the same thing there. The boxes for the leftovers in the Teacher’s Room are not laid out nicely, they are stacked on top of each other with only kanji labels to say what kind of food each is for. Being unable to read kanji I have to open all of the boxes to find out what kind of food they are for. I also always have more leftovers than anyone else because I don’t eat meat. Most teachers just stack their empty bowls and plates up and then walk away, but now they have to wait for this strange British guy who doesn’t eat most of his food as he desperately rummages through the boxes.

But anyway, eating with the kids tends to follow a pattern. First they are excited to see me and giggle amongst themselves. Then they start talking to me, if I am lucky then I can understand them and participate but invariably I have to apologise and tell them I don’t speak much Japanese. When the questions are things about insects, or “have you seen the skeleton in that room over there” my Japanese just isn’t up to scratch. I try to make conversation with them but I’m limited to asking what kinds of things they like, whether they are hungry or full or if the school lunch was delicious.

There have been some nice moments. In one class, for example, each kid around the table pretended to be a different animal with remarkable facial dexterity. Then they taught me a cool way of putting on the school cap where you spin it in the air a few times then land it on your head. A lot of classes ask me to read out their T-shirts, which usually have some random piece of English scrawled across like “Space Ranger Camp,” or “Jack’s Colorado Fishing Emporium” and one boy had the word “Unaffected” in big letters written on his T-shirt.

In my second week I was eating with a first year class and sitting next to a girl who sat with a very straight back and looking rather prim. We were eating a vegetable a little like mange tout but where you bite the side of the pod, then squeeze the pea thing inside into your mouth with your fingers. I was having a lot of trouble with one and was, it turned out, squeezing in the wrong direction. Rather than the pea moving through the hole I had bitten for it and landing nicely in my mouth, it burst through a new hole at the back, flew through the air and landed on the plate of the girl sitting next to me. We both looked surprised, and then started laughing. I told her it was a present. She gave it back.

On the Friday of my first week of school there was a big, nasty typhoon. The students were all told not to go to school but my company keeps telling us that we have to go to school in extreme weather, if we are sick, even if we have nothing to do and no classes to teach we should be there. So I got up that morning hoping that the bus service would have broken and I would have an excuse to stay home in the dry. The subway line nearest me had stopped but alas the busses were still running.

The wind was howling and the rain was falling heavily when I left for work at 7:40AM. I had my umbrella, which was holding up against the wind as I pressed my way to the bus stop. At the bus stop it became obvious that there was no way I could keep myself dry. The rain was not falling in the usual direction but was more flying in a sideways direction. There was no angle you could hold your umbrella at to keep yourself entirely dry so I got wetter and wetter.

After ten minutes of waiting with the other sorry souls the bus came and went, without any of us getting on. What with the subway breaking down the bus was completely crowded so there was no more room. I had to wait another twenty-five minutes or more for the next bus. This bus, again, was very crowded but I squeezed on. With about 60 drenched people in a small space it was unpleasant to say the least.

I was already twenty minutes late for work when I got off the bus and I still had to walk the ten minutes from the bus stop to my school. Unfortunately the wind was blowing in the opposite direction so I had to walk against it to get to school. My umbrella became like a sail pushing me backwards but the wind was so strong that I couldn’t physically get my umbrella down until I found a wall to shelter behind. As I closed my umbrella I realised it was broken, some of the arms had come lose, it was another dead umbrella in Japan (there are many, you see them everywhere).

With no protection I battled my way against the wind and into the rain. I was wet, miserable but somewhere around the small zoo I walk passed every morning I began to feel a reassuring sense of craziness. The whole thing was just ridiculous, this was my first week of a new job and I was going to be late to work, in a school with no students, because of a typhoon. I was secretly hoping that none of the other teachers would have come to school and I could just stumble back home.

No such luck. When I got into school they took one look at me and got me a towel, and a change of clothes. I hobbled into the teacher’s room and saw all the other teachers looking immaculate. “Bastards with cars,” I thought.

It was a boring day; I spent my time preparing for the next week. But, around 1pm everybody started to leave the Teacher’s Room. This happens sometimes, everybody will leave for something and I will be left alone. Then one teacher will remember that I exist and come and get me for an assembly or something. On this occasion one of the teachers said, “Sojio” to me, which means cleaning. So I thought, “Ok we are going to clean the school.” The pupils and teachers do this everyday anyway after lunch and I normally help out so I was pleased that I could join in.

I followed all the teachers into the corridor and someone was giving out gloves, so I took a pair. This was unusual, we don’t normally use gloves. Then everybody stared heading outside, this was also unusual as we only clean the inside of the school. The big group of teachers did not just walk outside but continued right to the back of the school where there is a fence and some trees. Some teachers had dustpans and I kept hearing the word “gomi” which means rubbish. When we got to back fence the other teachers started milling around and I walked around looking for rubbish. I found a crisp packet and picked it up. I walked towards one of the teachers with a bag for rubbish holding my crisp packet produly Then, I noticed that the other teachers were only picking up leaves, and spiky things from the trees. No one had any “rubbish” in my understanding of the word, so I threw my crisp packet back down.

I was desperately trying to join in and be helpful, “don’t be an outsider” I told myself. So I looked for spiky things as well, but I couldn’t find any. I placed myself in the biggest group of teachers and helped to rake up some leaves for about a minute. I decided to try and have a conversation so I explained to a small group of teachers that the spiky things contain what we in England call “conkers.” I mimed the game of Conkers, and they nodded understanding.

Later on that day the “conkers” returned to me in a different form. They were roasted and on small plates. They were not conkers at all but chestnuts. So now if you ever meet a Japanese person who thinks we have a game where we hit chestnuts against each other, then I’m sorry.

So now I know that if they say, “Cleaning,” they may mean, “Going outside to collect fallen chestnuts, which we’ll roast and eat later on.” No wonder I get confused sometimes.

I think it was in my third week of school when some kids started asking if they could interview me. The questions were all, “What are your three favourite…?” concerning animals, food or anime etc. The next week at about 4PM I had just finished printing some flashcards in the PC Room when something caught my eye. In the corridor outside the PC Room was a large A4 picture of my face.

This was odd. Around my face were lots of other pieces of paper and above them all was a large sign reading, “About Nick sensei and England.” Unbeknown to me the kids in the IT Club had taken the answers I’d given them and made a big display about me and my country. I nervously approached the display and began reading it. To my shame I realised that I had given different answers to different kids. Well I hadn’t known what they were going to do with the information; I thought they were just being friendly. There’s a moral here; when being interviewed make sure you know what people are going to do with your answers.

There was also information about fish and chips, English football teams and a place called Dove Cottage that I have never heard of.

But still, it’s not often you suddenly come across a big display about yourself. I am not sure whether either the kids, or the teacher, from the IT Club are going to tell me about the display, maybe there will be a big unveiling. Chances are though that the language barrier prevented them from telling me, or they never even thought about it. Or maybe this is how they wanted it to be, a big surprise for me to suddenly find one day.

Ah well, this job definately has it's moments. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying being Nick Sensei.