anne

What an awesome city! I had a great time on my last leg of the trip. This city was super confusing though. The whole country seemed kinda confusing. After landing at the Schipol airport I immediately got on the wrong train and was headed to Germany or something. I noticed that the train ride was getting more and more scenic and seemed to take longer than it should to get into the city itself.

I’m sorry I didn’t write much on my trip. I just wasn’t very inspired to write. It’s not you, it’s me. Watch this video instead, this sums my entire trip up in about 6 and a half minutes.

I haven’t written. I’m sorry, I have no good excuse. Wait, I do, because in France the internet is slow and the keys are all in the wrong places. I’m going to sum up Paris for you:

Paris is super cool. I really appreciate that architecture and design has been kept tasteful and authentic. The buildings are old and super detailed, and this seems consistent throughout the city. Also, I did some great shopping in Paris. It was great. And the food is pretty neat. I met up with some French people who took me out to eat snails and other neat French foods. I had some unbelievably good meals in Paris, which had really basic ingredients. I never really liked beets as a kid, but have found them to be a delightful vegetable.

One highlight was getting a ride around the city at night on the back of a scooter. The city is really quite small, so getting between all the the famous sites was possible within about an hour. I tried to walk around the city on my own one day and got completely lost and ended up somewhere off the map. It was kind of fun though, but I seriously had no idea which way to walk to get back to town, so I ended up taking a taxi. It was a good choice because I was in the middle of nowhere. The streets have no real grid setup, they just go whichever way they want. You can’t really walk in a straight line.

They say Parisians are rude, but they just say what they are feeling. Americans define that as rude, while they might see us as being really fake because we are nice even when we are irritated with people. I got called a “retard” by the lady running my hostel when I confused the subway with the train station. (But the subways sometimes go above ground and the trains often go underground, so they seem kind of interchangable, so I’m not sure how anyone knows the difference). On that note, I spent about 30 minutes stuck in a subway station because I didn’t know the word for “exit”, so I kept trying different halls that led to all sorts of different platforms. It was like a maze or something.

I stayed at an apartment which was shared with a bunch of kids from around the world. We had bunk beds like a hostel, but it was like the whole hostel was just the 8 of us. And there was no front desk or anything. It was really nice, except the lady who ran the place and called me names. But whatever.

When I first started planning this trip, I couldn’t actually get myself to buy my airline tickets. I wasn’t really excited about the idea of taking a trip alone. I’ve never really gone on a trip alone before, I had always gone with a friend or family. And I haven’t seen many people traveling alone either, they all seem to have a significant person or friend with them.

Traveling alone hasn’t been bad though. It’s true, I’m hopping from city to city where I know people. But I have learned a couple things about traveling alone.

1. When you travel, you are supposed to do all sorts of important cultural activities and see the main tourist attractions. If I were traveling with someone, I would feel entitled to figure out what this “Big Ben” thing is, or that towery thing in Paris. Yesterday for example, I met a friend for lunch who suggested that I see Buckingham Palace. I considered it, but last I checked, Prince William was dating some boring girl and I think Harry is too young for me. So my motivation for camping outside the gates there greatly diminished. Anyway, any guy who calls his house a “palace” is probably has some major attitude problems. So I skipped on that and found a Zara with four levels. Four. I am getting to the famous sites and such, but I’m doing those as I am ready.  I saw the National Portrait Gallery today and it was pretty fantastic.

2. You don’t need a strict itinerary when traveling alone, and people are more likely to let you stay with them. This has been great, because I can allow more or less time for things as needed. Where am I going this weekend? Who knows! When traveling without an itinerary, it is good to have some people you can call in case you need a place. Also, it is the low season, so I haven’t had any problems booking a hostel. Oh, and hostels are super nasty, but that will be another blog post.

3. I’ve learned that European guys are super aggressive in regards to pursuing women. This is a downside of traveling alone, so you need an elaborate story as to why you don’t want to spend the evening with Marco. I was thinking of getting a fake ring, but my students informed me that your ring finger is only one one hand, (and I can never remember which) and this system is super confusing because I have the same number of fingers on both hands. My fourth period class was sure that I was secretly married for one week at the beginning of the term, and since then I have avoided jewelry altogether so as to avoid confusion. So I was thinking of maybe getting a fake ring for both hands just for good measure. I can never remember which side of the road people drive on either.

4. Maybe there is some relation to number 3 here, but it seems that people are overall a bit…ruder. I have to laugh at some of the things that people have said to me. Clearly they haven’t heard about the massive Zara.

5. Foreign currency doesn’t count as real money. Wait, this has no relationship to traveling alone. But it is my policy to never figure out what the exchange rate works out to. It’s just too upsetting.

So yeah, I might prefer having someone to travel with, but this won’t kill me. I am so glad that I took this trip and didn’t wait for someone else to be ready to travel with me. it has been really fantastic. I can’t believe London, this whole town is amazing. I’ll write more later.

I left Ireland on Wednesday to fly to England. I came in at the London-Luton airport, which really isn’t London at all, but nearby the home of Devra and Gavin. I am the 6th Parmeter to visit these friends in England, and it’s no wonder that everyone comes here. I’ve spent the last couple days touring the countryside (Gavin took the day off work to show me around!) and drinking in pubs. It’s been fantastic!

Unfortunately I managed to have gotten all sorts of bug bites at some point in Ireland. I think it was right after I said something to the effect of “I think I’m the best looking woman in this country”, and wham! 20 bugbites on my face. I went to a doctor yesterday just to see if I was contagious, and he said no, which was quite a relief. I was imagining giving some sort of horrible FaceBite disease to my lovely hosts. Ha, get it? Hosts. I wonder if there is some way to turn the karma around. I should go an volunteer or give up all my worldly possessions or something. But then if I did that, I probably wouldn’t care about looking like a leper. Oh well.

Anyway, England really catches me off guard because the people look like any random bunch of folks, but then they open their mouths and say funny things like, “I lost me trainers!” Or “(incomprehensible something something) cheers!” Last night we drove to a pub called “The Cock” in a town called “Broom” in order to play this game called “Skittles”. Whoever is in charge of naming things here should get a raise. Anyway, “Skittles” is where you throw this heavy disk thing and try to knock stuff in this box over.  I created a new rule which stated that “If your disk thing hits the wall and comes back to you, you get another turn”. The rule also applies with darts, where if you dart doesn’t make it on the board, you get another turn.

I’m now headed to Cambridge, where I will see a game called “Rugby”. I’ll let the players know about my new rule, I think it might really catch on.

I’m headed to London on Sunday. Wish me luck.

So I’ve decided to move to Ireland. Dublin specifically. For starters, all of the men here are fabulous looking, while the women are all quite dowdy. As of 9:23am on Thursday, (my arrival day) I was the best looking woman I had seen yet. A table of French rugby players in my hostel confirmed this. Being the best looking woman (in my room at the hostel at least) is a nice change from Japan, where all of the girls are gorgeous and a size 0, and all the men look exactly like the girls.

Second reason for moving to Ireland: things open really early in the morning. Like 8am! And they stay open until late at night. It’s almost at though the businesses actually want to sell stuff, whereas in Japan stores are open for approximately 5 hours per day, except Wednesdays, Fridays and weekends where they don’t open at all. Not to mention the holidays that seem to take place about each week  such as Marine Day, Sports Day, and Throw Beans Over Your Shoulder Day.

Thirdly, I encountered an H&M next door to a Lush while shopping at 8am my first morning in Dublin. I nearly broke down trying to decide which store to go to first. The shopping in Dublin is fantastic. I bought a terrific 1940’s style dress for 9 Monopoly dollars Euros. I have no idea how much that is, but it was all very exciting.

I am currently writing from Galway, a smallish town on the west coast. You know those quaint pictures of Ireland? Well it actually looks like that. It’s completely ridiculous. There are castles and thatched roofs and pubs where people named O’Connoll actually drink Guinness and eat fish and chips.

I took a bus tour out to the Cliffs of Moher yesterday. It was really windy and cliffy there. Here’s a picture of them, which I didn’t take, because I haven’t had a chance to upload photos yet.In the visitors center next to the cliffs, there was a wall-sized picture like the one above. Japanese people were posing in front of the picture taking pictures of each other. I wanted to take a picture of them taking a picture of a picture, but I decided to take a break from traumatizing Asians.

I haven’t really learned Irish dancing, but I have another couple nights here. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Hey all, thanks for checking my blog. Sorry that I haven’t written for a couple of weeks. I completely finished my first year of work! The last couple weeks were a bit crazy with trying to submit grades before leaving.

I am leaving Japan in a couple hours. My first stop will be a week in Ireland. I plan on trying to write about once a week while I’m traveling, so please check back soon!

I had this epiphany the other day while wandering around the dollar store in my neighborhood (I love the greeting cards at the Japanese dollar store). I realized that the problem with Japanese English is Japanese people. The error isn’t in saying things wrong, per se. They are saying exactly what they want to say, but what they really want to say is totally ridiculous.I totally understand the sentiment. Here’s another great one below. I spent a while trying to figure out who would buy this card. Do you buy it for your partner on your own wedding day? Is it meant to give to someone else getting married? I am unsure.

Japanese is silly. Really silly. Greetings are along the lines of “How is your digestion?” with the reply, “Thanks to you, it is well”. What’s funny is that when you spend most of your life saying things like that, a simple, “What’s up?” / “I’m good” doesn’t cut it. What if you want to tell someone that your health is fully dependent on the fact that they are thinking about you? If you don’t tell them that, what is your relationship built on?

My students are dissatisfied calling someone simply a “friend” in English when they have a particular word to describe that individual’s status as a “person who I hang out with, but they are at least three months older than me, and they pay for my food and I use polite language to address them”. The idea of simply calling your sempai a “friend” shatters everything they have ever known about how they should operate in the world.

I totally understand the unwillingness to linguistic conformity. I refuse to use keigo in Japanese, the polite language where you refer to yourself in humble terms and use formal terms to refer to your partner. When I use keigo, it is really just to be sarcastic. I’ll use formal terms to talk about something really trashy, like drinking in public parks with old men or streaking. And I prefer to speak in my Japanese Woman from Cosmetic Advertisement voice. She speaks like there is too much air in her lungs and is trying to get it out quickly before she explodes.

I will always be an American who speaks Japanese. Not really a Japanese speaker. My friend Kate on the other hand, actually makes an effort to fit in. She bows without even laughing or adding dance moves. And she actually uses keigo. Even after like 7 beers. Did you all see our youtube movie?

I’m realizing that my students are saying inappropriate things in English because that is what they really want to say. I have told them that they shouldn’t really walk around saying “I love you”, but they don’t care.  They are expressing themselves, and the fact that someone somewhere considers it “inappropriate” is about as about as much a concern to them as my attitude towards polite Japanese.

Or course there are other issues that are faced by Japanese learners of English. I mean, English is a cumbersome language. The grammar is inconsistent and the spelling is a pain in the ass. Pronunciation is also way more difficult than it needs to be. And we could cut out about a dozen vowel sounds and probably continue to communicate. On that note, I will share with you some of my favorite English from the past week.

This is some feedback I got from students on the term. I love feedback week. These guys crack me up.

I saw this also in the dollar store and had to take a picture, even though Mike already captured it on his blog.And on that note, I am finished teaching for 2009. I look forward to seeing you all in Portland in the next couple weeks!

At any given moment, I have no idea what is going on at work. I have developed a Tolerance for Ambiguity to the point that I don’t even care. My office at work is currently a shitstorm of documents all in Japanese. I couldn’t even figure out how to file my taxes in English, and now I have to figure out how to get tax exemption in a foreign country and a foreign language? I figured out that if I do nothing, nothing happens, which is fine for me right now.

Maybe someone in personnel figured out that I stopped reading my office mail in about week 2 of the term, so they drafted this nice letter to me in English(ish). Please tell me if you understand what this is about. Not like I care, I just think it would be entertaining to know what is going on at work once in a while. I am especially interested in the “outbreak put” and “broken alternation”. Clearly it is very urgent because all this stuff is breaking.Yes, I’ll get right on that.

So I have just two more days of class before I fly home for Christmas. Then I’ll come back to Japan and give finals, then I am done with my academic year. It’s all very exciting, but things have been really busy recently. I am trying to plan final exams, get ready to head home, attend a different holiday party every night, and then I had another class added to my schedule. The teacher for that class had some sort of emergency and had to go on leave. It’s interesting to be thrust into a different class after a different teacher worked with them for the past 8 months. This class is all freshman, 24 boys and 1 girl. They are a group that tested poorly on the English entrance exams, which I’ve heard means that they probably went to a “Commercial High School”. I don’t know what that means, but I like turning up my nose and saying, “He probably went to a commercial high school”.

Just so you understand the level of these students, if you ask them “How are you?” A common reply would be, “I’m Japanese” or “My name Yusuke”. Even after explaining the question in Japanese, the students don’t always seem to understand why their reply is odd. Given that the difference in “Who” and “How” is too complicated, here is a page from the unit we were working on in class recently. This is the book and lesson that was arranged by the other teacher.

Are you serious? This looks like one of those drinking games that gets harder and harder and people just get drunker and drunker. Talk about convoluted! The students have to identify the correct answer, then search for the same or similar sounding words! Right, because in conversation we totally use those skills. This is so irrelevant for students who need to be able to introduce themselves in English!

Mom, seriously. Where are you on my illustrations? I’m dying here. We need to write a book. I can’t even figure out the answers to these questions.

And finally, your moment of zen. The students gave class feedback this week, and I thought this was particularly cute. (This is from a student in the top level class).Aw, regards to your earthworms. And I’ve tried to explain that unlike the movies, we don’t all run around telling people that we love them. Ah, whatever.

They say that when you live in a foreign country, that the highs are higher and the lows are lower. Or is that what they say about being in a relationship? Well, either way, my relationship with Japan is on the rocks right now.

First, I must say that I love my job. I love sitting and discussing world events with my students. I love when the lesson gets derailed because we stumble into something else that we really want to talk about. A couple weeks ago, students ended up drawing visual representations on the board of the class hierarchies that existed in their home countries. Even the Japanese students were really interested in learning about economies outside of their own.

But despite how great my students are, and how much vacation time I get, being a foreign woman in Japan is HARD. I just don’t blend in. And I get a lot of weird attention from men here. Unfortunately, media has depicted western women as being sex-crazed airheads, so I get some weird propositions. Even my female colleagues were surprised that I had time for sports and clubs in high school, with all the orgies and keggers that I must have been attending, while moonlighting on MTV’s The Hills.

But there are some perks, of course. Have I mentioned that I don’t pay for anything? Like last week, for example. I had a gorgeous Swedish girl staying with me through couchsurfing. She has the classic white-blonde hair and blue eyes and a funky scarf bit down. We went out one night for a beer at one of my favorite local spots. The owner is a sweet old man who employs a lot of international students. He probably pays them under the table, I have no idea. But anyway, he invited me and my friend out for dinner the next night. So we met up with him for a fabulous night on the town. Er, the neighborhood. We had a fantastic dinner, then ended up a pretty cool bar singing karaoke and drinking strange colored cocktails. As we started to head out of the bar to go home, it occurred to my Swedish friend that we hadn’t actually paid for anything all night. My response was, “Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? You think you need to pay for anything in this country?” At which point she rushed back into the bar and ordered shots of tequila and a bunch of pink drinks with umbrellas. Here I am pretending like I know how to salsa dance. I guess that the presence of not one, but two foreign girls in Kobe on the same night was big news. Got back to me the next day. Wild.

I realized something a couple of days ago. Exactly one year ago I was in Kobe for my job interview. I flew all the way to Japan to give a 30 minute demonstration lesson/job interview, then turn around and go home. It was totally worthwhile though. I actually did get to stay a couple nights, so it was a four day trip. I hopped over to Kyoto also to check out the “fall colors”. You can see from this picture that half of Japan had the same idea.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the past year. In four weeks, I will be pretty much finished with the academic year here. That means that I will have finished my first year on the job. I can barely believe it!

This was really my first career job. And when I think about where I was when I started, and where I am now, I’m amazed at how much I’ve learned! And I’m having so much more fun now than when I started. If I could do this job, but live in Portland, it would really be perfect. I really miss Portland. It’s a nice place, with nice opinionated people. But I will be there in 28 days! Woohoo!

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