Snowy Day

Last week came snow. People seem to behave differently when it is snowing, they smile and laugh more, they come out of their homes to shovel the snow from their drveways. One woman even said, "konichiwa," (good afternoon) as she stopped shovelling to let me pass.

Here are some pictures I took.


Bikes in front of my guesthouse.





At a park near where I live there are some wild animals.









Some snowmen.

Drinking with colleagues

Last night the teachers from my school and I went out to celebrate the success of Wednesday. Wednesday for me was an extremely dull day as I had no lessons and spent most of my time alone in the staff room cutting things out. Wednesday for everyone else in the school was a madly stressful day full of inspectors coming to observe lessons, talk to the kids and check the school for cleanliness. As I found out last night, the school did pretty well in the inspection and don’t have to worry about another one for about three years.

So, as is the usual case when we all go out I met some of the other teachers at 6:20 outside the small police station near school. It always seems to be the same teachers who meet here, and when we get to the drinking place everyone else is always already there. I sat next to one of the secretaries and the school nurse, both of whom are very friendly and easy to talk to. Also on the table was one of the teachers who started at the same time as me, another secretary who I discovered is only 19 and not allowed to legally drink alcohol until her next birthday. This didn’t mean that she wasn’t drinking alcohol, just that what she was drinking was disguised as orange juice. Finally on our table arrived a guy who is friendly and smiley at these events but has an infuriating habit of standing at the back of my lessons looking moody or falling asleep.

There was a woman who I have seen before in school but I have no idea who she is or what she does. Now I know that we are the same age. I know this because at the start of the night someone else pointed it out and we both looked at each other and smiled awkwardly. Then a few drinks later she kept shouting it while I continued to smile awkwardly.

There was another school’s staff party in the same venue and one of the female teachers was about to get married. So of course, the lights dimmed and everyone began to clap. A waiter came over to her, she stood up and he announced the good news to which everyone said “ooooh,” apart from me because I don’t understand anything in Japanese until about 10 seconds after it has been said. Then, of course, everyone started humming, “Here comes the bride,” and clapping, apart from me again because I was too taken aback by yet another new Japanese custom. Maybe we do it in the UK too but I’ve never noticed before.

The alcohol was flowing freely, literally it was am all-you-can-keep-down kind of affair which it should have been since it was £16 a head. The vice principal was walking around the tables with a big pitcher of beer filling any empty glasses he saw and then forcing its owners to empty them again in one go. I’m not the strongest drinker in the world in any respect, alcohol goes straight to my stomach where I honestly think it flips a coin to decide whether it can be bothered to digest or send it straight back up again. Yet alcohol does not do a lot to change how I feel, and this is both a good and bad thing. By then the vice-principal had become loud and emotional and this heralded the first time that he has ever given me any feedback about my work. I am happy to say, that it was good. His main point was that now the kids always say, “hello,” and, “see you,” to me, which since he has never been to any of my lessons that is probably the only thing he can go by as to whether I am any good. “Weldone,” he said, and shook my hand. Then, he filled my glass and hugged me saying, “I like you.” I told him that I liked him too and he looked happy.

For the reason of how relaxed and inebriated people get at these workdos I think the ones in Japan are about a million times more fun than in the UK. I don’t think we change so dramatically from our working selves to our social selves, and perhaps feel free to be more honest in the workplace from the start. This is all speculation but at the end of the day I am not complaining, it’s always nice to get praise.

The use and abuse of English

English is everywhere in Japan, on T-shirts, shops, packets of food and even wrapping paper. It is used to look stylish and also to just fill space. For example, I recently bought a packet of pick and mix (or pic'n'mix if you prefer) from a huge department store called Tokyo Hands. The packet for the pick and mix seemed usual enough; it is clear except for large red words like, “Candy, Cookie, Chocolate,” in the middle.


Then, as I was munching away I realised there was smaller text all over the rest of the packet. Words such as, “secret abode” and “Whacko Jacko,” stood out.


Why would a packet of pick and mix be abusing Michael Jackson I wondered. I read further, “Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt,” this was something to do with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory then. “Tim Burton, Johnny Depp,” aha I realised, a film review.

The review is broken up into paragraphs that end halfway through the last word and don’t make a lot of sense when read by themselves. Whoever designed this bag also did some letter swapping too including, “Jichael Mackson.”


Still there was enough for me to find the original article that this came from. It turns out to be a review from The Japan Times, the main English language newspaper here in Japan. You can read it yourself here http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ff20050916a3.html.


So one man's film review is another man's pick and mix bag design. I wonder if anyone has ever said that before?

Being Santa

coSanta day had come, and then shortly afterwards Santa time came too. As I walked across the playground to the kindergarten stretching third years waved at me. Approaching the outside door of the Teacher’s Room I could see a few heads within looking in my direction. When I got to the door and they presented me with slippers it was clear that I had come a little early. They rushed me into the designated Santa changing area and slammed the curtains closed behind me. I am not sure if you can slam curtains but let’s just say that you can.

The Santa changing area was the back of the Teacher’s Room; it had a sink, a table, a cupboard, lots of boxes and me. There was no obvious location for my Santa costume so I started looking in all the boxes. From the other side of the curtain I heard a child talking to the teachers and this made me feel like a fugitive. To be more specific, I felt like a fugitive who was being sheltered by kind farmers whilst the small but powerful police were after me. Anyway, there was only fifteen minutes until show time and all I could find in the boxes were Santa’s black shiny boots.

“Are you ok?” they asked me when the kid had gone. The curtain was pulled back slightly and they passed me the boxes of Santa outfit, everything from coat to eyebrows. I had with me two red cushions that I was going to stuff under my red coat to boost me up to Santa proportions. I also had the idea that this might make my voice deeper and more Santa like.

I got changed and then the teachers made some adjustments to my coat and beard. One teacher stuck on my eyebrows and I was more or less ready. My Santa belt was holding my cushion in quite well but I was worried about it slipping so held it as I walked. When it was time one teacher led me out to the stairs, where another one told me to follow her to the second floor.

Nervously, we walked up the stairs and into a classroom. I could hear all the kids in the Hall and some teacher getting them all riled up for Santa Claus. I was led to a balcony that ran along the outside of the school and ended in a door leading to the Hall. The Hall windows were all blacked up so no one could see in or out. The teacher leading me was receiving signals from another teacher on the other side of the school, who was making hand gestures through the window.

The door to the Hall opened, a teacher looked out, saw me and slammed the door shut again. The bag of rubbish they had given me as a sack was getting rather heavy and my beard was blowing in the wind. I could see the third years running around in the playground opposite and wondered what they would think if they looked up and saw me there. The door opened again and I was gestured to walk forwards. There was a curtain in front of me and I wasn’t sure whether I should enter or not. I decided it must be time so pushed my way through the curtain.

I found myself in a large room full of kids, the woman from the previous day was standing at the front in a Santa hat and holding a microphone. She looked startled to see me and it was clear that I had arrived too soon. We looked at each other, I looked at the kids, they looked at me. There was only one thing for it, “Hohoho Merry Christmas everybody,” I shouted nervously.

The main lights in the room went out and a spotlight came on instead to illuminate me. I was told to go to the front of the room, between the two groups of kids. I was still shouting, “Merry Christmas,” but the children were not reacting like you would expect them to on seeing Mr Claus himself. They were looking at me not with joy or fear but just sheer confusion.

The problem was that since I don’t teach the kids at the kindergarten they had never seen me before. Since they had never seen me before they found it really odd to see a guy with pale skin and blue eyes in their school at all. So even without a costume I was strange to them, but strap on a red fluffy suit, an ill-fitting beard and bobbly hat and it was no wonder they felt confused.

All this went through my mind as I took my place and the host explained to the kids that Santa doesn’t speak Japanese but that two kids from each class were going to come up and ask me a question. A line of dazed children formed itself to my left and the first two kids approached me, they asked me the sleigh question in unision (and in Japanese). The host, it really was her show, translated it for me and I answered in my semi-deep attempted Santa voice. The kids were then supposed to shake my hand and sit down but instead they gazed absently into my bewitching blue eyes and extended white eyebrows. Eventually another teacher came to drag them away.

This pattern repeated itself until all the questions had been asked. It was then that I realised my cushion was showing from under my coat. I moved my hands to cover it but that gave me the posture of a rather uptight nervous Santa instead of the friendly, relaxed legs apart Santa we all know and love. Anyway, it was present time and the music started.

They had a Christmas CD going and lots of teachers came out like holiday reps to get the kids all excited and clapping along. The first row of children stood up and began filing past me. The host was sat by my side handing me presents which I gave to each kid saying, “Merry Christmas.” The kids were supposed to shake my hand and say, “Thank you,” but this caused them a certain amount of difficulty. After giving them a present I offered my right hand for them to shake but they didn’t understand the opposite hand idea of shaking hands so invariably stuck out their right hand too. This was the case so many times that I started shaking with both hands, so no matter what hand they stuck out I would clasp it with both of mine and shake it like I was royalty or something.

Two hundred presents later all the kids sat down and the host started going on about something or other. Then suddenly she asked me if I could stay. This was new, we hadn’t gone through this the day before, it wasn’t in the script! I looked for some signal of what to say, she gently shook her head and I said into the microphone, “Sorry children I am very very busy.” She liked that answer and repeated it in Japanese with a great degree of enthusiasm. However, I did have time for the kids to sing for me.

The children on the right side of the room stood up and someone started playing a piano behind me. They sang Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer in Japanese and I tried to merrily sway my head along with the song. They were still a collection of confused young people though, they looked like sheep trapped in a field going through the familiar motions of chewing, or singing a Christmas song whilst absently staring ahead. Still, they sang nicely and I told them so when the host suddenly thrust the microphone into my face like I was a judge on Pop Idol or something.

The kids on the left sang a different song and I again tried to sway my head along to it merrily. When they finished I made another comment for them and then it was time to leave. This time though, when I walked to the back of the room all the kids started shouting and reaching for me. Finally, it seemed, they had got over their confusion and were reacting to me like I was a real Santa. They pulled my coat, shook my hand, waved at me and it was all very sweet. I waved goodbye to them, wished them a merry Christmas once more and was led back to my own clothes.

I got back into my Nick costume but left Santa’s eyebrows on because I liked them and wanted someone to take a picture of me in them. All the teachers in the Teacher’s Room made the hand gesture for, “You’ve still got Santa’s eyebrows on,” when I opened the curtain. I reassured them that I knew this and asked them to take a picture.

And here it is.

When it was time to peel off the eyebrows lots of my eyebrow hairs came off too, blemishing Santa’s pure white eyebrows with a few dark hairs of my own. When the teachers saw this they were concerned that I might be in pain but I made the hand gesture for, “My eyebrows are much too thick for this to cause me any pain,” and so all was well. As a reward they gave me 2000 yen of book tokens and a big stocking of snacks and treats.

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.