I've recently joined the Japan photographers mailing list (emailing list, that is) and I have posted some of my picutres on their website. Check them out if you're interested.
Hisashiburi is the Japanese term for 'it's been a while' or 'long time, no see'. It has been quite a while since I've really posted anything of interest. It's not for lack of creative thought, which has actually been quite strong recently. I've had a very good month of studying and learned quite a bit of kanji. I think the realization that we only have about 3 solid months left in Kyoto is finally beginning to dawn on me. It's so sad really because the entire life that I created here will dissipate as soon as we move back to America. I really am satisfied with the life we have lead here, and though there are more things I would like to do, so far I do not feel like I have wasted the time I've had here. In fact, I feel like I have learned much more than I had expected to learn, including scholastic issues and Japanese language.
Yesterday we had a really nice day snowboarding in Gifu. The slopes themselves were nothing too spectacular, but the snow was really nice and not icy. Craig and I went with 4 other Japanese people and one of our foreign friends. (By foreign, I mean non-Japanese - I guess that's some of my Japanese influencing my English). I had a lot of fun with two of them in particular, Eiji and Noriko, because they were about as skilled at snowboarding as I was, and they liked to take a lot of breaks too :) We left at 5 AM and returned at 1 AM the next day - quite a long day!!! Then we slept in a little this morning and had this great strawberry french toast that Craig has learned to make recently. He altered it a little bit by adding a strawberry sauce and not using a few ingredients that are hard to find or expensive to buy here.
We've actually been doing a lot of cooking here now. My friend, Elisha, is now our roommate and so she and her boyfriend, Jin, have dinner with us nearly every night. It's great because we can cook nice big dinners and pay only half each, which significantly cuts down on our food costs. We actually realized that it is not much more expensive to buy food for 4 people than it is for 2. This is because the core ingredients are the same but you just add a little more meat or vegetables to the recipe to serve 4. It has been working out really well so far, and it's interesting have people around all the time.
Today, Mike came over and we watched Death to Smoochy, which I thought was a quirky and slightly over-the-top black comedy about a Barney-like character. The movie got a lot of mediocre reviews here, here and http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/review.asp?mid=2043724, but I didn't think it was half bad, and agree with the more pleasant critique of it here. Anyways, check it out for yourself, or at least watch the trailer to get a better glimpse of the movie. It was an interesting spend of nearly two hours of my lazy Sunday.
We're getting excited about upcoming things such as hearing from the rest of the law schools I applied to, planning our trips to Greece and Tibet, and eventually (but sooner than later) moving back to the States. In the meantime, we're trying to get as much work as possible (which has not been too good for me because the English classes ended at the schools I was at last month and I will teach at English clubs for only 15 days in March so I need to find more work!). That actually reminds me that I have an email to send off, and it's getting late here, so I've got to get to bed. Oyasumi!
Tatemae and honne are two very Japanese concepts that almost seem recognizable from a western perspective until actually played out in reality. I experienced tatemae and honne to its fullest and worst extent today. Basically, it ensued in one absolutely miserable day for myself, but perhaps a learning lesson to be reflected upon and laughted at in the futre.
Tatemae: The truth as presented
Honne: The reality
The reality at the school I am currently teaching at is that every time I teach, I am told about 20-5 minutes prior to the lesson what I am teaching. The lesson is scrawled sloppily on a piece of notebook paper and relayed to me. I then do an impromptu lesson based upon my teaching experience and the outline given to me. This is the program that the current "model English school" in Hirakata City is employing. This is what I am used to and understand as reality.
Today was a different: people came to observe and comment on these "model English classes" (I must put it in quotations because it honestly is the antithesis of what one would consider model). Thus, an eloborate scheme was construed to create the most "wonderful" English class in the world - in order to be presented to the outside world as a normal English class. ha~! The school didn't even bother to tell me, their English teacher and language consultant, what on earth was going on. I arrived in a sweatshirt and brown pants - usually dress for a day of romping around with 8 year olds. However, today I noticed that everyone was in suits...hmmm it seems like an important event is happening - too bad no one bothered ot tell me that I was supposed to be involved in it (which points out yet another irony of this model English school... they can't even communicate in simple English to their own native English speaker about a very important event). So, I arrived dressed down and all together unprepared for this marvelous display of English classroom technique. The day fell apart from the start - lack of communication, Japanized English takeover of a supposedly native English class, and classroom observation by the surrounding education officials. Yet, this class, with over 10 hours of preparation time into it, was presented as normal to those observing. This is tatemae. This is an entirely out-of-the-norm class with ridiculous preparation presented as a class that is taught on a daily basis. I am disguisted by the system. How can anything be accomplished if no one even knows what is really going on. I know what kind of classes are normalliy taught and what sort of preparation goes into them. Today's presentation of reality was absolutely skewed, and then followed by a 2 hour meeting on how great the English course is at this school. Too bad no one really wants to know or say what the truth is. Too bad they're so preoccupied with their own face that they don't care enough about the kids to devleop a good program to make their English learning time an actually useful thing. I mean, when it is acceptable for a teacher to yell at a boy for saying "I'm good, thank you." in response to "how are you?" instead of "I'm fine, thank you," I think that Japan has some serious problems that must be confronted about the effectiveness and educational value of the English programs in Elementary schools. The end.