Enjoy the journey.

Tag: English teaching

A Week of Willies

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Yes, that is exactly what it looks like. A 2.5 metre, 250 kg, giant, wooden wang.

It’s amazing, isn’t it, that when something’s on your mind, it just seems to keep cropping up? This week, from the new run of “Please do not expose yourself to other commuters,” signs on the train to an unexpected linguistic discussion (that resulted in three people chanting “dickbread dickbread, dickbread” in Portuguese for almost seven minutes), the universe just keeps coming up bellends.

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Today’s post, believe it or not, has a religious theme.  I give you:

Dongs of Praise

Komaki’s spring fertility festival is one of the internet’s favourite spiritual events. I’m guessing you can see why.

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The festival is actually called Hounen-sai or Hounen Matsuri, but people usually just call it the Penis Festival. Again, I’m guessing you can understand.

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Although a lot happens at this festival (like dancing, rice-cake throwing and traditional music) the main event is the rowdy procession bearing a giant carved phallus to its new home in Tagata Jinja, the old home of Tamahime who, along with her children, developed the area during the Yamato period. Tamahime, like many ladies of the time, did not live with her husband, but rather received him as a regular visitor in her home and… I think you’re beginning to perceive the oh-so-subtle symbolism of the festival.

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In the old days, the giant penis was actually attached to the crotch of a straw samurai, borne along by the inebriated procession, which seems a lot more graphic to me. These days, it’s modestly snuggled into a portable shrine, but is much, much bigger, meaning the bearers have to struggle along with around four hundred kilos of weight on their shoulders. And not just calmly hauling the thing either, but actually bouncing, spinning and waving it around to the cheers of the intoxicated crowd. Needless to say, the bearers need to put away even more sake than the spectators to manage this feat.

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At Tagata Jinja, the penis is installed in the place of honour, while last year’s model is auctioned off to local householders and businesses. (And can I just mention that this is the best tradition ever? Just think, in the living rooms and public spaces of literally hundreds of normal-seeming Aichi homes and shops lurk enormous, metres-long, polished, hardwood wangs. Hundreds. Whenever you feel sad, or start believing the world is empty of magic, just remember that.)

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The long history of the shrine is why, I think you sometimes hear painfully sincere foreigners speaking earnestly about the real meaning of the festival, which is not waving genitals around on sticks, but is instead a solemn veneration of the divine generative and restorative properties of the earth and season.

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Uh huh.

I think that modern city dwellers need to understand that olden-day rurals enjoyed a good metaphor as much as anyone; and enjoyed a dirty joke even more! Ensuring the blessedness of the sacred earth is important to a community making its living from the soil, it’s true. But if you can manage your religious observations while drunk and waving a willy on a stick, so much the better. If the shrines wanted to encourage solemnity of worship, they wouldn’t hand out unlimited free sake and dick-whistles. The locals have been enjoying the joke for 1500 years. You can enjoy it too.

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Kin and I were actually pretty sober for this year’s festival, despite the best efforts of the shrine volunteers to fix that state. After a quick wander around the food stalls (selling a variety of phallic snacks) we made our way with Dudebro and Granita to join the throng of spectators waiting for the giant wang to wind by. The three of them found an okay spot by the  road (the best thing about this festival is that, unlike many others, the procession is so long that everyone who wants to see the event gets a chance to) while I wound up on the other side, near the most horrible old lady I’ve ever met.

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Seriously, she was great; she made her way to the front of the crowd by leaving a trail of the most horrible carnage behind her.  I only became aware of her after she inserted one ancient and extremely pointy elbow underneath my floating rib while doing the same to the gentleman on her other side. When both of us yelled and turned slightly away from the injury, the old buzzard had enough room to reach the sake cart, snatch two cups and scurry away.  I was keeping an eye out for her after that, so I got to watch her repeat that action many, many more times.

The procession was the usual wonderful spectacle of graphic banners, men in silly hats, and penises, both large and…. well, still pretty large actually.

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Not to mention people handing out still more cups of sake which, after a while, I just started handing directly to the awful old lady (who received them with the same natural gratitude as a duck accepts breadcrumbs).

We then raced the procession to Tagata Jinja itself, to revisit the food stalls and view the current collection of penis-shaped items accumulated by the shrine.

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Tagata Jinja is worth a visit at any time of year. Anyone in the area who finds anything even remotely penis-shaped trots off with it to the shrine and donates it to the cock-collection. Which sounds like one of the easiest and most entertaining methods of fulfilling your religious obligations that exists in the world to date. There are also a lot of carefully carved or cast penises, (including a penis-shaped shrine bell) and, while the big fellas are auctioned off these days,  there are still a good many Dicks of Christmas Past (as it were) arranged within the shrine.

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The Tell-Tale Dick

In rod-related revelations closer to home, it seems that the build-up to exams has infused the Dick Phantom with a fresh burst of creative energy. Kin tells me that the Phantom’s artistic sensibilities have not greatly matured during this period, but it seems that his productive output has increased significantly… to the point where he’s becoming careless.

His first slip was discovered a few weeks ago, when Kin, stacking desks after a second-year exam overturned one to reveal a lovingly-rendered, extremely veiny illustration, sketched by the master himself.

Kin, himself an accomplished phallic artist, is unwilling to expose a brother to the long arm of the law, so he continued stacking desks without trying to determine who had been sitting at this one. (I wish I were joking, by the way. He once drew an enormous, horribly graphic one on our metre-long whiteboard and I got so used to looking at the damn thing that I forgot to erase it before my grandmother came to visit.)

But then, last week, while marking the papers themselves, Kin turned a page and revealed the final clue to the Phantom’s identity… in the form of a gigantic, hairy knob scratched into the student’s completed and SIGNED examination paper.

The moment was pivotal. “Is this…a cry for help? Is the Phantom weary of life in the shadows? Does he actively seek apprehension and redemption in the light?”

“Or did the dumb little bastard just get bored and draw a dick on his exam paper like he does everything else?”

Figuring it was the second, Kin marked the paper, carefully closed it and returned it to the stack, still determined not to lose a comrade in arms.

“Fight on, Brother. Fight on.”

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They are legion.

Gem

XX

P.S. We’ll be putting up a more complete album on our Facebook page on Sunday.

 

P.P.S. For those who are wondering what sort of linguistic discussion could result in three people gravely intoning “dickbread” at one another for an extended period, it was a phonetics conversation about minimal pairs and meaning contrast on nasal vowels in Portuguese. Pau pão was the only sound set Granita could come up with, and it was only after we’d spent several minutes attempting to accurately reproduce the words that one of us asked about their meaning.

Pau pão : Dick, bread.

At The Moment…

IMG_3053Spring is around the corner!

 

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…but it’s not here yet! We’re throwing off the outdoor chill along with our coats and enjoying afternoon tea together every day.

 

IMG_1978Kin is potting madly (his latest creation is a mizusashi to hold water for Gem’s tea ceremonies). This week he begins a machining course as well!

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Kin is also doing a lot of drawing (since it’s too cold to play outdoors). Mostly for work, but a bit for fun as well. Keep an eye out; he will post some soon on our Facebook page.

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Gem has resumed plunking at her guitar for the first time in over a decade and is playing lots of Beatles and Monkees songs.

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Gem is also inspecting other people’s pots….

IMG_2984… and is looking forward to fixing up her own sorry specimens when the weather warms up (the indoor refugee pots are still going strong, though; they’ve kept us in herbs and salad greens all winter).

IMG_3022We’re braving the cold to venture outdoors in the city.

IMG_3106…and outside the city, too!

We are enjoying our newly tidy apartment, eating a lot of soup and drinking a lot of tea. We are only very reluctantly leaving our warm futon on weekday mornings. Gem is reading Vanity Fair (and it’s AWESOME! It’s like Jane Austen, only everyone’s evil! – Gem) and Kin is working his way through a variety of old DC cartoon series.

We’re wrapping up closing lessons, marking exam papers and scratching our heads at some of the answers we see and hear….

In Kin’s case (junior high), most questions result in roars of “It’s orange!”, “I’m sunny!” and “I like pussy!” all of which require his gentle correction:  A thump on the head with a rubber hammer and “I’m sorry, the answer was Tuesday.”

Gem’s (much younger) students offer sweeter, yet infinitely more perplexing answers:

“Momoka, where do you want to go?” “I want to go to Kenya! Because, I like black people!”

We’re looking forward to better fruit, to our spring holiday and to Shallow’s visit next month! 

And in the meantime….

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We’re breathing deeply and waiting for the warm.

Kin and Gem

XX

Settling in to 2014

By Gem

By the end of this year, we won’t be here any more!

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The start of a new year has really brought it home to us; our time in this little apartment, in this little town is going to end in 2014! This place has become so much our own it’s hard to believe that, this time next year, it will belong to someone else. Time is suddenly a limited commodity.

But the start of a new year in Japan is a difficult time to manage any sense of urgency. New Years in Japan is like Christmas in Australia; it’s the time when the whole family get together and then just kind of sit around. For a week, the country shuts down, while people eat, gossip and walk to local shrines to pray for good fortune through the year. It’s not a time for exciting trips or big projects, but for kotatsu-snuggling, cups of tea and big bowls of mandarins.

Not to mention New Year cakes!

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And other lovely things!

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Right now though, we’re still in Nagahama and we still have things to do. On Monday, Japan restarts itself. Our evening classes will resume, our friends will return from their home countries and we will be back at our schools, doing our best to slide some English into stubborn little skulls.  

At Kin’s school, there will be a continuation of the dramatic investigation into the identity of the elusive Dick Phantom; one of the boys (we assume) has developed a taste for penis-based graffiti. The Phantom spent the final months of 2013 creating elaborate, phallic extravaganzas over every wall and piece of furniture a kid that age could reach. These works don’t show a lot of dedication to accuracy, but, particularly toward the end of the year, a real focus seems to have been given to scale. We can only imagine that his scope will expand in 2014.

I never really feel I’ve left my school, as half of it seems to live in this building. The very, very small first-grader with the very, very big eyes has finally worked up the courage to ask why I seem to spend so much time here. Her eyes got even bigger when I told her this is where I live!

Although Kin and I enjoyed the Japanese-style New Year, in time-honoured Western fashion, we have made a resolution or two; or rather, have reviewed how our Tanabata wishes and our everyday goals are going.

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This is one of Kin’s tanabata goals… or sort of. He never got to start those glass-blowing classes; the college filled up before his enrolment was processed! Instead, he’s been spending his weekends up to his elbows in clay and is having a wonderful time. His very, very earliest work (above) has just returned from the kiln.

Kin never made it to cooking class either but, on the domestic front, is now single-handedly responsible for the running of our household (a development we will share at a later date) and is getting better at it every day. And on the artistic front, with blue plastic document sheets, sticky tape and a stanley knife, he produced a photographic soft-box that make today’s pictures even nicer than usual!

And me?

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As you can see, I didn’t learn to braid my hair; I cut it all off, instead! In my defence, though, this has made it a lot easier to reach my goal of learning to swim properly and I HAVE successfully poached an egg, so I think I’m still ahead of the game. I also finished my first knitting project!

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Kin’s scarf is so long that he can (and does!) wrap it around his entire head to keep the wind off his face when he rides to work. I’ve started a scarf for myself, now and once that’s done, I’ll be ready to get a little more ambitious. 

Learning to draw underwent a lengthy hiatus during our illness, but during this week of shutdown Japan, I’ve picked it back up. Kin is excited to share his skills with me; I think he’s too optimistic, but I’ll keep trying.

We’re ready for you, 2014. We might end the year in New South Wales, but we’re starting it in Shiga, and we’re going to enjoy every single day of both!

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Gem

XX

Welcome to English Day!

By Gem

The day that ALTs from all over Shiga come to chat and play games with our sixth graders, giving them a chance to meet people from a variety of nations and, hopefully, give them a chance to use their English in a social-setting. The kids spent several weeks making decorations and preparing little speeches and interviews for their guests, while Nanook took them through some small-talk conventions and discouraged them from yelling “BUTTS!” when there was a gap in the conversation.

As well as Nanook and I, the children were going to meet Prozac, Tank, Angel, Sailor and both Timbuktus.

Wooo! people

The original Timbuktu was having a difficult English Day. Kin, as part of his long-term campaign of harassment, had recently decided to rename her. (Kin is actually quite fond of Timbuktu, but her anti-gay attitude infuriates him; in earlier semesters, they could talk reasonably about these things and for a while he had her converted, but since then he’s worked less at their shared school and she got a new homophobic preacher, so she’s unfortunately regressed. Q-tip, who attends the same church, has thankfully not picked up this attitude.)

“I’ve decided,” announced Kin, flinging an armload of sketches onto his desk, “From now on, I’m going to call you “Bigot”.”
Timbuktu, who is a gentle spirited person despite the inner nastiness encouraged by her church, cringed, certain she knew why, but still unable to resist asking.
“Well, with the new JETs here, we have two Timbuktus. Both of you are about the same height, so we can’t do “Big and Small Timbuktu”.  You’re both from the U.S., so I can’t differentiate by nation. BUT, only one of you is a bigot! So, I can call you “Bigoted and Not-Bigoted Timbuktu, only yours turns into “Bigot” for short! It’s perfect!”

Deciding not to argue (in the interest of the illustrations he was currently producing for her) Timbuktu made her weary way to Nagahama Elementary, taking the chance to plead with me as we put up posters and stuck balloons on the wall.
“Can you do anything, Gem?”
“Nope.” I grinned a bit too, but compared to Kin’s, my grin is nothing. “We’ve got gay friends visiting again soon, and you’re going to embarrass everyone if you don’t get this out of your system.”

Timbuktu knows when she’s beaten, so she just set her shoulders and prepared for an afternoon’s chatter with dear little innocents.
…whose first question to her was “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“What?! No, I… Gem, what are you teaching them over here?”
“Don’t look at me,” I smirked, surrounded by my own little gang of journalists. “I haven’t taught these kids since February. Now, what were you asking me, Taro?”
“Where are you from?”
Minna, shiteru! You know this! Where am I from?”
“………ehhhhhhhh……”
“Guys, come on, I taught you for almost a year. Kazoku ni atta! Where am I from?”
“America!”
“No!”
The kids shuffled a bit and whispered frantically to one another, while I glowered around the circle.
“Don’t say America! She gets really pissed off if you say America!”
“Where else is there?!”
The group searched their folders, rolled their eyes desperately around the room, then, noticing the last ALT they had spoken to, lit up with new confidence.
“Canada!”
“No!”
Igirisu?
“NO!”
“The… The USA?”
“That’s America again!”
Over their protests that there WASN’T anywhere else, I only just heard Timbuktu snigger.

Australia, damn it!

Prozac, meanwhile, was having his life-choices evaluated by three earnest-browed girls in cardigans.
“How old are you?”
“I’m twenty six years old.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No, I don’t.”
…awkward pause….
“HOW old are you…?”

While Tim was wondering if she needed a stronger moisturizer.
“How old are you?”
“I’m twenty two.”
NO WAY!!!!

Deeply unhappy with the direction our lives were taking, the children fretted, tutted and advised us to change our ways.

Sailor’s group commiserated with her on her failure to find a husband (“Kids, I’m twenty eight!”) and wondered aloud if, at this age, she would ever manage to catch one. Mine expressed doubt as to whether my decrepit ovaries would ever be able to kickstart themselves when Kin and I finally decide to reproduce. Prozac’s desperate assurances that he just needed to meet the right person were met with skepticism so great it bordered on disdain. At our ages, the children felt, we were already halfway dead, yet none of us were doing anything worthwhile with the limited time left to us!

Basically, it was your typical, everyday conversation with twelve-year-olds. It was a relief when the interview section was completed and we moved on to activities. Each of us had prepared a game or dance, all of which went down well with the kids and we gradually got them to forget what miserable failures we all were as people. After collecting our autographs, the kids gave us each an origami crane covered in English messages and we all exited the gym.

Cheerful, despite a remaining trace of uncertainty regarding our life choices, we teachers retired to the meeting room to devour Pocky and minestrone-flavoured chips.

“It could be worse,” pointed out Tank, on his seventeenth stick. “Last week my second graders asked their teacher if his wife is cheating on him.”
“My third graders learned to say ‘SEX!’ from someone,” added Sailor. “And when they learn a new word, it’s all I hear.”
“Mine just learned how to say ‘Poop’,” confirmed a gloomy Tim.
“If only mine learned ANY English,” sighed Prozac. “My first graders spent our last lesson having a farting contest. The winner got to fart in anyone’s face.”
Pocky froze between packets and mouths as we all waited.
“I was too tall,” he added, and everyone relaxed again.

Aren’t children just a joy? Does anyone else work with the little darlings? What do yours come up with?

Gem

XX

As ever, all drawings were produced by Kin. Don’t tell him I used these ones though, because he doesn’t like them much!

At The Moment…

Kimchee PastaGem is doing her best to duplicate California Girls’ amazing kimchee pasta recipe.

Red EyeKin is trying exciting new things. (Note: Trying exciting new things is not always a good idea, especially if they involve beer and tomatoes in the same can)

FireworksWe are seeing these beauties almost every weekend. Gotta love the Japanese summer; the heat is intense but the fireworks make up for it.

IMG_0303We are trying out our wonderful new camera! (Visitors to our Facebook page may have already seen “The Blair Wasp Project” one of Kin’s first experiences with the Powershot; we are very, very happy that it’s a Toughcam!)

Cool Japan (tanuki)

We are showing new JETs around our wonderful town.

IMG_0316We have run out of pins AGAIN, working on the photo wall.

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We are counting down until Gem’s mother comes to visit!

What’s going on in your world at the moment?

Gem and Kin

Tanabata Projects

From http://from-japan-with-love.blogspot.jp/2010/07/tanabata-star-festival.html

From http://from-japan-with-love.blogspot.jp/2010/07/tanabata-star-festival.html

Tanabata (Australians might know the Chinese version, Qixi) is one of the nicest festivals of the year. In Shiga, there are several days of celebration, culminating on July 7th. This is the day that the cowherd prince Hikoboshi (Altair) and the weaver princess Orihime (Vega), separated by Heaven for neglecting their duties, are able to cross the Amanogawa (the Milky Way) to meet and reaffirm their love for one another.

Unfortunately, if it rains on this day, the lovers are unable to meet. Since Tanabata falls smack in the middle of the summer rainy season, you can imagine this happens quite a lot!

This year, the Nagahama skies were clear, so I guess the celestial couple successfully got it on. This also meant that there were no impediments to the humans wanting to celebrate the festival! There are some truly spectacular Tanabata celebrations out there, but ours was pleasantly low key. One of the major Tanabata traditions is writing wishes on pieces of colourful paper and tying them to bamboo branches, which are hung outside houses, shops and, at my school, classrooms.

 

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Traditionally, girls wished for skills in needlework, while boys wished for good handwriting. These days, the kids wish for all sorts of things, but the emphasis is still on skills and personal improvement. For example, they might wish for certain personal attributes, such as being hardworking or cheerful, increased skills in games or schooling, or for good relationships with their peers.

This little one has wished to be good friends with all of the people around her.

This little one has wished to be good friends with all of the people around her.

 

This first grader has broken with tradition; his wish is to collect an entire set of mushroom stickers!

This first grader has broken with tradition; his wish is to collect an entire set of mushroom stickers!

2013-07-04 10.10.51With all of this decorating and wishing going on, I shouldn’t really have been surprised to start finding things like THIS on my desk; strips of paper in various colours along with requests to know MY wishes for the year.

It was actually really hard to think of one thing to wish for in front of my kids! My eventual wish was very obvious, but completely sincere: I want to be much, much better at Japanese by the time I have to go home. Some of my kids were sweet enough to say the same thing about English!

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Still, while Japanese is a major learning area for me, it’s not the only thing I want to study this year!  So, what other skills should I ask the star lady for this Tanabata…?

Kin is starting glass blowing classes (In this heat! I’m worried he might actually die!) and will be coming with me to my cooking lessons when the new round starts. This week I begin tea ceremony classes with a truly terrifying lady whose hair never, ever moves (the Japanese ladies pay hundreds for classes with this woman, but she seems to want to encourage ladylike behavior in her butch Australian neighbour, so I escape for about twenty bucks a month).
Less excitingly, I will:

  • Learn to braid my hair. Probably not as well as this (done by the ladies down the road, including the terrifying one) but I can at least make a start.

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  • Learn to swim (properly). I’m Australian, so of course I can sploosh around in the water safely and even surf a bit. But I never learned to be a strong swimmer, and I never learned an overarm style. The HoneyJew is a swimming instructor back in the states, so I’ve asked her to help me out.
  • Poach a blasted egg! I’m a fair cook, but poached eggs and scones are two areas that have thus far completely eluded me. Scones can wait till next winter, but by golly, poached eggs are happening this month!
  • Finally learn to bloody knit and finish this wretched scarf for Kin. For the last two years, I have picked the damn thing up, done a few rows, made a mistake, unpicked a few rows, done a few more and then put it down again. This time, it’s happening!

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  • Learn to draw! This is my current, sorrowful ability level: 2013-07-09 09.30.30

But Kin, Master Illustrator, is going to teach me! I’ll keep you updated with my progress (if any).
I love thinking about all the new things we’re going to learn! It’s so exciting! Does anyone else have any plans for Tanabata projects? What would you like to learn this year?

Gem

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