Flying horses couldn’t keep me away

The Sports Day scaffolding has been assembled in the arena. Praju reports students have locked off classrooms down a musty hall and filled them with the fledgling efforts of their massive billboard sized paintings. I see a few third year students wandering the halls like Lady MacBeth, their hands covered in red paint. Leaders have been selected. Classes have been re-scheduled. Starting next week we will have classes until lunchtime and then four hours of Sports Day practice in the afternoons. The Sensei (including me) are busy correcting mid-terms and marking essays, so these half day reprieves come at a good time in the term. We will do busy work inside and through our screened windows monitor the students flapping cards and dancing around in capes. All of us hope it will not rain.

I’ve been on sick leave for the last two weeks, in and out of school. Did you know all the massage therapists at The Massage Place wear white button-up coats that look like chef’s jackets? And solid white polyester pants? And the female receptionists wear baby pink aprons with their names written in hiragana so the little children know what to call them? It’s kind of cute in a cutesy way, and I now associate the color pink with all things medical. There is always pink somewhere in a doctor’s office over here. Pink slippers. Pink massage tables. Pink aprons. Is this meant to be soothing?

Also, there are only male massage therapists and only female receptionists. But hey, when I get a 10-minute foot bath followed by a 15-minute shoulder massage followed by 10 minutes with the octopus electric massage suckers all for 500 yen ($5) I wouldn’t care if it was administered in the 99-year-old woman’s smelly basement. I’ve been in and out of The Massage Place for the last ten days, and yesterday when they asked me how I was doing I was able to honestly say I’m “much better”.

I’ve been home the last three days resting up on the couch, reading, slowly (and I mean really slowly) packing our winter clothes boxes. I strategized. I developed a yoga routine. I figured out when I can go swimming and how often I need to do it. I finished two stories that have been in the back of my mind and eating up space in my sub-conscious. I have, in short, just come out of a spring hibernation. I washed dishes, lengthened my hamstrings and ate leftovers. I also got a little perspective, which makes me freak out a little less when I see on a neighbor’s email “status” the phrase: eight weeks left.

Eight weeks!

Eight weeks.

Back at school I’m eating my sandwich out of a bag that says I may put these things in it: carrots, broccoli, apples, sausage, candy, cheese. We’re getting tempermental plastic over here as summer approaches.

The three Board of Education professionals come in during lunchtime in black suits and power shirts and suddenly all 50 of us, chairs rolling back in our wake, are on our feet and the Principal gives introductions. They roam around all afternoon and then disappear. We did a stretch of “emergency” cleaning for them, if you’ll remember, but I don’t believe any comments were made on how spiffy our shelves were. Disappointing.

The student teachers are also here. There are about two of them to every Sensei and they’re all wearing the same black suit. During the morning meeting they troop into the room carrying their own red stools to sit on. They don’t appear to have any other purpose than just observing. I’m keeping a watchful eye on them.

I showed the second year students my brother’s high school graduation announcement and they gave him the highest praise: “Cool”. They were very disappointed to hear he had a girlfriend. He does have facial stubble in his senior picture, which is something the boys here won’t have to deal with for many more years. The Asian face just does not sprout hairs like a North American mountain man.

I filled one of Johnathan’s old socks with rice and heat it up in the microwave for my shoulders. Several of the Sensei have commented on how “cute” his sort-of-dirty old sock is. I think my parting gift to a few of them may be beautiful cloth bags of rice that will sit sweating in their metal desk drawers all through August and September and October. Until November when I expect a few thank-you notes and anecdotes about healed muscles. These chairs we sit in. They are very bad for the back.

Ms. Delicious is very glad to have me back at school and gave me an awkward side hug this morning. “You are feeling better,” she said. To which I said, “Yes, I am.” I did 30-minutes of yoga this morning, took a shower, made my own lunch and was 15 minutes early to school. “What does this mean, ‘be fired up?'” Kana asked me in debate class, holding out her dictionary. And so I taught them the cheer, Let’s get fired up! We are fired up! and I expect to see it used at Class Match while their classmates are thumping volleyballs over the net.

I’m feeling good and it’s great to be back in the saddle where I get to tell T-Rex Sensei, “The magazine won’t carry an item about his scandal,” is wrong, and I get to tell O Sensei that the phrases, “We will clean up the park this weekend” and “we’re going to clean up the part this weekend” are virtually identical, and where Kana answers everything with the phrase, “I am impatient”. How are you doing? I asked the class and Kana shouted back, I am impatient! Well, then, Kana, let’s get this party started.

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2007 was one big chestnut eel

This will be the last post until January 2008, as the husband and I are jetting across the pacific to snowy Montana and then on to cosmopolitan DC where we will see, for the first time, where all the laws about smoking are made. We’re attending a very important wedding for a very important Aussie brother. It’s a little like anticipating the wedding of my twin (we have the same birthday), only we’ve lived apart for 5 years. So, Rory, I have all kinds of sappy things to say, but I’ll save them for your mouse-encrusted wedding card and the rehearsal dinner where, if there is gin to be had, I might be found singing a rousing rendition of Let it Snow! with a brigade of other out-of-town guests.

My summary of my last days in Japan 2007: debate, debate, debate. A little whimpering and furtive wiping of the eyes on my part at the “closing ceremony”, and then a few minutes alone with Ryosuke where we both agreed that even though we didn’t have the language to explain it, a bond had formed and we were sad to see that go. We look at each other and smile, and I can see in his eyes, and the familiar quieting of his lips, that he’s trying not to cry, and I was trying the same thing, so I let us out of the room and we walked down the hall making small talk about ALTs in general.

“Especially you,” I said in the room before we all left. “I made a bond with especially you, Ryosuke.” And perhaps because we were a girl/guy combo the feeling was strange, and neither of us knew whether to hug it out or pretend nothing was happening. Then Gonzo Sensei said she ran into Ryosuke in the hall and he said it was sad because now debate was really over, and I feel the same way. He reminds me so much of myself in high school, which is perhaps why I feel so close to him.

I wanted things to end on a happy note–after all the weeping and teeth gnashing on the actual tournament–but we all ended up sobbing a little and then giving gifts (me: certificates and pictures; them: pig finger puppet key chains). And they tried to speak in English and took turns translating each other’s Japanese speeches. And I waxed on about how they were my first class to do everything with and how things will never be the same. They’re becoming 3rd year students in April, which is basically pre-graduation from my loving clutches. I will only see them sporatically, and then for very focused grammar-intensive classes with T-Rex Sensei. They move to a separate building altogether, stop attending clubs, and go to secret study camp in August. It is crunch time if they want to get into the good schools–if Ryosuke wants to pursue debate in college, and he does, he has to ace his entrance examinations. Which means track and field club will be the last thing on his mind. And if I don’t walk past him leaping hurdles after school, I probably won’t see him at all.

Gee whiz, Peaquah, you should save something for the good-bye speech in August. Or else they’ll all be kneeling in the sweaty gym and all of a sudden, when the wave of sadness should sweep over all of us, we’ll be struck with a sense of deja vu, and then the moment will be lost. And if I do nothing else with my 8 months in Japan, I want to work on my ability to cultivate moments. Because right now, I suck at it. I’m all dry-eyed and stoic and then I get home and break down before I can even walk across the room to Johnathan. He finds me in the fetal position on my yoga mat mumbling, “I’m having a hard time. And I have to pee”. And then the poor, long-suffering man must pat me on the back while I say, I don’t know why I’m so upset. Because another characteristic of the mouse people: we don’t know why we feel the way we do. It’ll be a few days later, when I’m sifting through my pile of (clean) clothes on the floor, that the light bulb will go off above my head and I’ll realize: oh, I was crying because those three students made me laugh, and I made them laugh. And we were funny together. Plus all those other things like comraderie and their colored shoes and horse-like work ethics.

So farewell 2007! You sure knew how to throw a good party. I’ll leave you, Internet, with a few winter student-written haiku to warm your insides and take my mind off my lingering debate saddness. [Who knew I could be so sappy? Resolution for 2008: dial down the sap and cheese.]

It is snowing now
I have seen Santa Claus
But he was a doll

Christmas children noisy
City is brilliant and glamorous
But we believe in Buddhism

A lot of white snow
My brother and I made a snowman
The snowman looks cold

Eating many foods
Delicious chestnut eel
I have a stomachache

And, finally, the haiku that makes it sound like we in K-town are being invaded by an army of white giants.

Winter is very cold
A lot of snow falling now
Snowmen will come soon

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December 2007 index

The Sensei are harried and literally run down the hallways between classes. I catch them sighing to themselves between periods. For the last two weeks (roughly) we’ve been “finished” with school for the term. What this really means is that there are morning “voluntary” classes and parent-teacher conferences in the afternoon. The Sensei are actually more busy since school has let out. We, the ALTs, have been busy right up until this morning; I can officially say we checked off everything on our to-do list. So, how did we spend two weeks of unfettered catching up time? I give you my December index:

Number of students’ English haiku typed and laminated into bookmarks: 80

English Club Christmas parties cancelled at the last minute due to the absence of a venue: 1

English teacher’s end-of-year parties that included raw fish: 1

Mouse cardboard posters hand-crafted as Christmas presents: 7

English course “wall of fame’s” erected: 1

English camp schedules created: 3

Number of times Green Tea Sensei wanted us to change something about English camp and didn’t give any suggestions as to how: 7

Journal entries about debate: 5

Time spent doing supplementary listening exercises with six students: 45 minutes a day

Make-up debate matches: 1

“Who I am” books printed, collated and stapled as winter homework: 56

Letters written to the debate team: 3

Certificates made for debate closing ceremony: 3

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Open letter to my debate students

Don’t tell Gonzo Sensei that sometimes we got off topic and talked about the names of the Harry Potter characters. Don’t tell her you asked me to re-cap the seventh book, which won’t be released in Japan until this summer. Don’t tell her I asked if you were dating anyone and it came out that Ryosuke likes a girl. These things can be our secrets.

You’re outside my window now, running in track and field club. Several students are dragging a tire across the arena for soccer drills, but you, Kasumi, run right past them. You’re back in the red and white track and field jacket with KURUME written across the back. You have your hair pulled into a bun at the back of your neck and it bounces as you jog. Is it creepy I now watch you like this? That I know what you’re doing now because I know you’re not with me in the English room going over affirmative arguments? That I can recognize Ryosuke by the back of his hedgehog hair? That I felt vindicated when I asked Ryosuke if he was glad debate was over and he said, “no, debate was fun. Track and field is work.”

I think you know you were first and second in your class this term. That you, Kasumi, slowly crept up the ranks and overtook the poor student who wasn’t in debate and therefore should have been studying. I like to think I had a small part in that; that you aced your debate exam because of me. What was the extra push you needed all along that you only go this term?

You, Ryosuke, are always number one in your class. It’s been this way since the beginning. And yet you pal around with the other two boys who are occasionally accused of cheating; when did you find time to study for biology? English grammar? Math? Your English mind reminds me of a computer, and the way you use your dictionary’s voice to ask questions makes it seem even more mechanical. Should a man pay for a woman when they go on a date? Are they still going out? How do you know if you’re in love? You can’t come right out and ask us these questions, so you use your dictionary instead. We all laugh at the voice. It gets to the point where everyday we ask, “what’s today’s sentence?” You’re a high school boy in a room full of girls. The sentences are always questions.

The final debate made all three of you cry. Ryosuke, you couldn’t pull yourself together. I patted your arm and smiled at you and did all the things a young female teacher can do. I even took you outside and left you between the strangely green bush and the chainlink smoker’s fence. I didn’t want to leave you there alone because we had a bond, you and I, we worked the closest together, and I felt like I was abandoning you, since after every round you and I sat down and went through your rebuttal point-by-point, and I like to think together we developed a short-hand, an ability to speak clearly to each other even though we were speaking in your second language. But I couldn’t stay out there with you because I could tell it embarrassed you to cry in front of me. You kept wiping your tears away furiously with your fist. There are some things a boy has to go through alone.

It was a lot easier with you girls because I could hug you. I pretended to punch Ryosuke on the side of the head, I ruffled his hair, I squeezed his arm, but I couldn’t decently press myself up against him the way I did with you Mio when we won the semi-final round; so carelessly we crashed into a table. We would smile at each other, and I like to think we were both pleased in the same way. In a shy, “did you see what I did?” kind of way. I’m still struggling with how to express myself to a 17-year-old boy. You think, debate team, that you have problems expressing yourselves. I have had 18 years of practice dealing with brothers, and so far a chuck on the arm is what I’ve come up with.

I thought I wouldn’t be nervous on the day of the meet. I thought we could waltz in there and I’d be happy if we won a single match. But then I saw the other teams in their uniforms, with their handwritten notes, and I realized they weren’t geniuses or foreigners or English wizards. They were just other students who happened to live in a far-away town, and they cut their hair and carried their bags the same way you three did. Only the three of you had the cool shoes: Mio’s puffy hi-tops, Ryosuke’s black shoes and green laces, Kasumi’s polka dots. You would have looked more professional in your black leather school shoes, but then we wouldn’t have seen the smirks from the judges or gotten the thumbs up after we won matches. “Awesome shoes,” our ALT friends would say. Even after we lost I kept thinking about your shoes, and I even made you do the hockey pockey on the train so I could finagle a picture of them. Ryosuke taking my advice to use an example in his final rebuttal; Kasumi’s polka dot shoes–why has my mind catalogued these as important, and yet I can’t remember why we were laughing two Friday’s ago or why Ryosuke did gymnastics on our chairs when I went to the bathroom?

There has been some crying on my part in the privacy of my apartment. Two and a half months of practice and so far I’ve cried about you three times. I know we can’t keep up debate–you’re almost third-year students, and that means nothing but studying. You’d gotten so good you could play on par with me, and I had native English on my side; we’d hit the glass ceiling. But I keep trying to figure out what’s making me cry; why I feel so broken-hearted.

I’ve put a lot of things on hold for Japan–my logical thinking, my arguing, my opinions–but in debate all of that came bubbling forth and you didn’t seem to mind. You didn’t bat an eye. Of all the perceptions people have of me in Japan–that I’m friendly, funny, a good ALT–I think only the three of you have seen the person I was before I came K-town. You liked me for my ideas and not my funny faces. We had so many hours of serious talk, of idea volleying, of one-on-one practice. That is why when I say this is my best memory of Japan I say it not just because I got close to you three, but because when you, Ryosuke, took my advice to give examples in your rebuttal, and then Gonzo Sensei came over to say the example was the strongest point, that it won you the match, you looked at me so incredulously, like all this time I’d been hiding what a smart person I was, but you’d found out my secret. And you weren’t going to forget it.

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Identity wheedling

I’m not usually in the teacher’s room for cleaning time. I have my own fish to fry and desks to casually lean against and rain to contemplate in the English room. I’ve trained those students so well that they don’t even snap to attention when I rattle the key and open the door. Instead they lazily go to the whiteboard, pick up markers, and start doodling. Then, when Green Tea Sensei pops her head in to ask us a question or ask for some late homework, we all look around with our scared eyes and elbow each other, and I pretend like I’m doing something besides talking to Kanako about the latest Harry Potter movie. But today the PTA is setting up for a combo Christmas party/farewell party for our German exchange student, and so I leisurely ate my lunch and watched the students empty the teacher’s garbage cans and halfheartedly sweep between our desks. Then, one of the vice-vice principals lifted the top off the shredder and three boys rushed over with garbage sacks and they filled them to the brim. I’ve occasionally seen the tail-end of this operation, and it always amazes me that we shred three full Peaquah-sized bags of paper in a day.

After cleaning time we were requested to make a visit to the Superhero class where we accidentally sprang on them the fact that they have English listening winter homework. “Surprise!” I yelled and everyone laughed. “Come and do it with us!” we sang, because DEBATE SEASON is over and I’m having a hard time trudging to my car everyday past the students who are now back at clubs. “Please,” Gonzo Sensei said, “don’t tell them it was my idea. Or they’ll just think I’m the dragon lady telling them what to do.” But it slipped out that it wasn’t our idea, exactly, to assign them 12 listening exercises, that we were just the medium to alleviate their madness. “Please don’t wait until the night before and listen for three hours,” I said. And when I asked, “do you understand?” as we stepped off the stage and out the door, the Superhero class sucked in a deep breath and yelled, “yes!” so loudly they had enough sound for themselves and enough to share with 1-2, The Class Who Never Speaks.

Back in the teacher’s room the students are lined up behind O Sensei’s desk, waiting for her to cut and paste and check off their names for grammar assignments. One girl with a birthmark the shape and color of a black eye gives me a three-fingered wave. Two boys lean over O Sensei’s desk and stare at me. “Oh!” they say. “Hi boys,” I say, and they do a bobble-headed bow. I think the students aren’t quite sure where I live–in the teacher’s room, in the small closet off the English room, in the 1-1 classroom, and so it’s a surprise to see me in the halls, on my way to the bathroom, getting my shoes after school. It’s as though I’m a partially invisible ghost who wanders through the halls mostly undetected unless you’re looking right at me, and then I’m quite surprising, like “oh, I forgot you lived here”.

I’m racked with regret that I didn’t take the five minutes in the Superhero class to congratulate the debate team for their 4th place at All-Kyushu. I spent that stressful, weepy day with them, and I’ve been sifting through my thoughts with a pinch in an email, a pound in my journal, and I’m just not quite ready to explain more than that. When I stop crying when I go home and can watch the track and field team without a nostalgic buzzer going off in my head, then I will write, dear Internet, about the three students who have forever welded themselves to my heart. Until then, you can know my heart has been turned into a gold star, and I wear it on my sleeve, so proud am I of how much they worked and what our teamwork accomplished. I’m in the throes of planning a debate closing ceremony complete with certificates and pictures and three hand-written letters, and maybe then I can express to them that this is my best memory of Japan, that they’re the first students to make me cry, that I’m so sorry the dark late nights and dictionary conversations are over. But most of all that I found out at the Saturday tournament that Ryosuke likes a second year girl, but now we no longer have the time together or the joking relationship for me to wheedle her identity out of him.

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Storming the brain part 3

I never intended this to be like a mini-series in the funny things my students write, but I’m so enjoying their responses to “future plans” that I can’t help share them with the internet at large. Some of you, I know, would prefer to read about what Empress Peaquah and her husband are up to, so to pacify both camps:

Item the first–debate practice starts up “for real” tonight, which means I’ve cancelled all my fun elective workshops like calligraphy and Japanese lessons until mid-December. We’re [read: I’m] re-writing their affirmative argument, which is how I will spend my afternoon. I can’t really go into a lot of details here since any competitive debate coach could stumble upon this site and learn our secret strategies, but I will say that I’m going to do the very best I can to get them ready, even if that means I have to sneak off to the English room to nap in the afternoons to keep my energy level up. I’m willing to make that sacrifice for the team.

Item the second–oral communication classes are cancelled this week to give us a chance to wade through the essays and the Sensei a chance to prep them for their grammar tests next week. The only people really happy about this arrangement are Praju and I. [Green Tea Sensei reported back that the students said they miss me and wanted to see me in class. “She wants to see you, too,” Green Tea Sensei said. “No she doesn’t,” the students said, “you’re lying.” Under the most normal of circumstances I’m somewhat ambivalent about oral communication classes, but after getting this little peek into their minds and finding out these kids want to be pastry chefs and birds and pirates–well, how can you not miss that?]

Item the third–It would be fair to say I’m a little stressed. Yes indeedy. I oh-so-foolishly agreed to do a presentation at the ALT mid-year conference next week; I have a Harry Potter test to make; I’m a day behind on my letter to my grandpa; I have to write a haiku example for an upcoming lesson; and I have to pick a short-style haircut for the lopping of my locks which will occur on Saturday. Last night at calligraphy class I rested on the couch with a plaid blanket pulled up to my chin. “Are you sick?” everyone asked. “No,” I said, “just overwhelmed.” Perhaps the most telling point is that I’ve been reading the same book for the last month, and I’m only on page 226. If I do nothing else before Thanksgiving, I want to start a new book.

Item the fourth–We’re going to Korea in a week! Johnathan, in an effort to support my power-trip regime planning that happens when we go on vacation, has found us an awesome Korean show (that toured on Broadway incidentally) that includes, but is not limited to, a cast of people making music while cooking. There is a chance we could catch a flying cabbage the way one catches a foul ball! Or that we will learn how to play our knife set like a xylephone. Our 3-day itinerary for Seoul reads like this: shopping, saunas, cabbage show; palace, shopping, war museum; shopping, traditional Korean performance, Barefoot park visit. It’s going to be weird. It’s going to be cool. And, on the way back through customs we get to be the first foreigners we known to be subjected to the fingerprinting and picture-snapping that’s going to happen from now on to all non-Japanese residents. It’s the closest I’ve come in my 23 years to feeling like a dangerous criminal, and I quite like the thrill of the Japanese government thinking it needs to keep a close eye on me and my nefarious whereabouts.

Item the fifth–sumo on Saturday, which is two-ton Japanese men in $20,000 bejeweled thongs. There are no words for how excited I am. No, wait, I feel something coming: OH MY THAT’S AWESOME.

Without further ado, more future plans from your favorite essay-writers, the oral communication students!

1. go to space–> space science/astronomer [I don’t want to be the one who has to break the news that astronomers aren’t usually the first draft pick for missions to Mars.]

2. buy the house–> work very hard/need the money

3. go to the Federal Republic of Germany–> study German/study English hard [First of all, where is this? And secondly, these people seem to have a complex about what language they actually speak in the official Federal Republic. If the Federal Republic can’t make up its mind then how can my students?]

4. to be teacher–> chemical

5. a swimmer of the breaststroke–> I’m good at swimming

6. work at a factory–> make chocolate

7. police officer–> the secret police

8. a magician–> Hurry Potter [Harry Potter]

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Storming the brain

Lately, in oral communication classes, we’ve been trying what my fifth-grade teacher called “highly varied and unusual” lesson plans. Or the tame-Japanese version of creativity which includes things like surveys and charts but NOT things like costumes and glitter. Last week we gave the students brainstorming papers which is just a series of circles connected by arrows. I sketched the whole thing on excel, wrote “future plans” in the middle and printed out 240 copies. To up their level of seriously lagging commitment to the class we let them fill these out in in groups of four, even though it meant there was some talking in Japanese. We usually have an “all talking must be in English” policy which, not surprisingly, makes our students reluctant to speak at all, what with O Sensei and I on patrol up and down the rows, tapping their English dictionaries knowingly.

Today, after madness of the the All-Fukuoka debate tournament on Saturday (second place! have I mentioned how happy I am about this?) and the crazy 16 kilometer walk this Monday for “training of our body and mind,” I finally got around to correcting their “future plans” essays and the stapled brainstorming sheets that are nearly obscuring my black teapot. Most of them are pretty standard and mundane, with a few surprise twists. A lot of them say they want to live abroad or study English more, which is a real surprise to me since I can’t usually get them to respond to “hello, how are you?” in class. But once in a while I get a real gem. In this case a boy with clearly unusual ambitions. Below, you will find what he wrote in the future plans bubbles, and then what he wrote in the smaller bubbles coming off of them (to provide more specific direction to his dreams). He wants to be:

1. a doctor–> in my town

2. a food fighter–> dessert

3. president–> in the USA

4. a pirate–> in the Caribbean Sea

5. a fisherman–> in the Pacific ocean

6. A junior high school teacher–> a staff advisor to the soccer club

7. Spiderman–> in K-town

In his essay he writes that in addition to these seven he’d like to be a police officer, a teacher and a doctor. He ends it with, “I can’t make a decision.” I like the level of specificity. That he doesn’t want to be any food fighter, but a dessert food fighter. As in, “I’ll start a riot for you at the company welcome party, but don’t even think about calling me before the third course.”

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Big Debate News

Resolution: All primary and secondary schools in Japan should have classes on Saturday.

Unlike last year where we had to trudge away in the rain, this year my students stayed for the entire debate tournament. Why you wonder?

BECAUSE WE TOOK SECOND!

This means that instead of debate being finished/finito/owari we are now contenders for the All-Kyushu title (tournament December 8th), and I have to start generating fake affirmative speeches at an alarming rate. I don’t have brain power to write too much more since my thighs are so sore I can’t cross my legs from a 16 km walk I did yesterday with the 1-1 homeroom. Think of it this way: it’s essentially like taking second at a state tournament in a state with five times the population of Montana. Out of five million people, our team is number two. It’s quite an honor and all the teachers at school have been patting my arm all morning, saying “thank you, Sensei.” Praju and I went up to the Superhero homeroom to watch the team tell the rest of their class and the students clapped and cheered. The debaters couldn’t hide their proud smiles.

The hi-lites:

• On the way to the debate Ryosuke, our single boy, got a flyer for a womens’ college.
• In the gas station where we bought our lunches in the morning I was patting everyone’s backs and arms, trying to encourage them. One girl looked around in surprise and we all realized she didn’t belong to our school. They teased me about it all day.
• As soon as they broke into the final match they burst into tears and we were hugging and jumping around the room. I grabbed Mio so hard we tipped into a table.
• They lose in the final round (their fourth match of the day) on the affirmative side. They’d won the previous three on the negative side. I approached their table after it was over and asked, “what happened?” Ryosuke shrugged. “Three times negative,” he said, “our brains couldn’t switch.”
• At the end of the debate the other ALT judges came up to say how unique our arguments were, how much they liked our team. (FYI: I wrote most of their negative argument.) “Peaquah Sensei,” the debate team said, “we didn’t realize how smart you are.” I tapped the side of my head, “now you know,” I said, and we all laughed.
• After it’s over the judges ask Ryosuke what he really thinks. He looks at the other two girls on his team. “Of course we don’t want to go to school on Saturdays,” he says, and we all laugh. “When we heard this resolution we thought we are really, really negative.”

We took them out for ice cream and pictures afterward and as we ate our sundaes I watched the lights go out in Ryosuke’s head. They’d gotten back from New Zealand the night before, and not only was it a feat they’d pulled off, but it was one they’d pulled off with 10 hours of jet lag on them. “I’m really lagging,” Ryosuke said when I asked him if he was tired from the plane. As soon as the final match was over his energy level plummeted, and I felt for him, for the work he’d put in to get them to that level. He won second place for them with all his flow charts and logical thinking. In the first round the ALT coach leaned over to ask, “how did he get so good?” I shrugged. “We don’t really know. We just pointed him in the right direction.” I remembered the rides back from speech contests in high school, how we stood in the gym of Bozeman/Helena/Butte High getting our certificates and then we all piled onto the bus for the ride back and I’d fall asleep, my nose pressed against the bus’ window. I saw that same relief on Ryosuke’s face after it was all over, that he could flip through his New Zealand pictures without the debate tension like a cloud in his head. And that made it all worth it. Because that level of relief? That drop in energy and ensuing exhaustion? That means he’d pushed himself as hard as he could, he gave the number one team a run for their money, and he came out the other side gripping a handle on the train, his head on his chest, finally able to sleep off a bit of that New Zealand lag while we all poked him from behind, reminding him NOW it’s time to PARTY.

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All the fun I want for awhile

Last Saturday, in the mad flurry of late nights that led up to November 2nd, our last official debate practice ever, I came into school as a coach. As a Sensei my hours are rigid and I hold to them with such inflexibility one would think I’d turn into a stone palm tree if I stayed at school a minute longer. I am out the door like a shot at 4:15, even on Tuesday and Wednesdays when cleaning time has not yet happened. This life in Japan requires extra work and all my mental energy reserves, and when I don’t have that free time in the late afternoon to leisurely ride home and watch all the little first-graders trundling along under their square laquered backpacks, it feels as though someone is taking the wires in my brain and purposefully crossing them, until before I know it I’ve dropped my phone in the toilet and am spending 5th period crying in my car.

For the last three weeks I have more or less been staying at school every night until eight o’clock, running practice debates with the team in which I am the mean ALT who asks them pointed and perfectly correct English questions, and they must fumble around with their pastel-colored evidence cards, looking at each other helplessly. I have earned some serious cache with The Big Kahuna who has seen me stumbling into the teacher’s room when the school song plays at seven o’clock, reminding all the students to vacate the premises immediately. Little vision remains after my hours of reading ink-speared newspaper copies, and so I grope around for my purse and then totter on my hungry legs out of the teacher’s room and home.

Last Saturday, during late afternoon practice, we shared the first floor with the band. It’s hard to really take an argument seriously when a question ending in, “don’t you agree?” is punctuated with the shrill taps of a trumpet. Or the long pauses during preparation time are serenaded by a quartet of flutes. The music was a bluesy/jazzy combination, and so it felt like our debate was taking place in the corner of a cocktail lounge, and all we were waiting for was the candid cameras to pop out of the fake plants like jack-in-the-boxes, to explain why the trombones were doing scales while we were trying to talk about morality in public schools these days. Whomp-whomp-whomp.

After Saturday’s rehearsal we met every day during the week, and my cold, while not a nasty, violent affair, faithfully reared its head each morning so I had to open the car door in full traffic at 8:17 to hawk up a mucus plug on the unsuspecting pavement. I came to school sounding like I had a scarf stuffed down my throat, and then by 10 o’clock I would be clear and fine, able to conjugate verbs in a single breath, my cold having decided it would lie dormant in my sinuses until the next staff meeting. Thursday, though, we had a truncated/abridged/curtailed schedule as the result of it being November 1st! and us having an all-school assembly in the drafty gym. So I took my wad of kleenexes and tried to not offend anyone by blowing my nose, but there were times when it was necessary, and the pomp and circumstance of my cold suddenly seemed so much bigger and more serious when my sneezes were echoing off the rafters and 900 heads kept glancing in my direction. The assembly finished just in time for the 10 o’clock time barrier to roll around, and so during first period I could be all, “what? that wasn’t me? Do I sound sick to you?”

Other than being sick, I really enjoyed the four hours of debate after school. We verbally romped all over that resolution, and even though the kids are in New Zealand this week, I think they will be able to put it all into practice this Saturday at the debate meet. I thought the stress of having no free time and spending all my extra periods during the day writing fake arguments was being incredibly well-handled by my brain who made no complaints up until last Thursday. It didn’t even hint that the wheels were getting worn down by the rocky road of sickness and debate stress. Had my brain clued me in to how I was feeling, I suppose I could have prevented what came next, but as it was it snuck up on me like a slobbering wet dog tongue and left me thinking how gross it was that I was making a pile of used kleenexes in the car and how noble it was that no one had seen me cry.

This is what happened: For a week and a half now, I have been carting in paper and paper to appease the front office ladies into signing my official “May drive to work” paper. They keep coming back for more, and I keep having to run out to the car to dig through our manilla folder, pulling out insurance! repair cards! Name change forms! I have (secretly) been driving to work anyway because there are semi trucks on the road at eight o’clock at night, and Praju’s bike does not have a light. Which means we are being led through the dark streets of K-town with only my weak wheel-powered beam. It is unsafe! is my cry, but the real reason is it’s cold at eight o’clock in what is now November, and we’re tired.

Finally, Thursday, I was down in the office, huddled around an online Japanese/English translator while they tried to tell me “the required insurance person is not.” When I finally got across that I didn’t understand we trooped down to the English room where we comandeered an unsuspecting Gonzo Sensei and then O Sensei into translating, and what resulted was 30 minutes of paper shuffling, questions and fervent hand-throwing on the part of the office lady. It was finally explained that although we have “voluntary” insurance and the car in our name, we need to change the “compulsory” insurance slip over to Johnathan’s name. Normally I’m somewhat easy going about these things. The Japanese have a complicated bureaocracy and I just go along with all the name-stamping and chain-of-command because it’s no skin off my back. The trouble was that Johnathan has taken care of all these papers and stamping and talking to the right people, and so I felt like a helpless fifties housewife. “Well, my husband said…” kept slipping out of my mouth and when they asked me if we talked to so-and-so or did this-and-this I could only shrug helplessly. “These are all the papers I have,” I said, and O Sensei patted my arm.

And then I could fear the tears building up behind my eyes. Later, I suspected it was the car talk, that it brought back memories of this summer’s driving test, of the stress and fatigue and crying jags I had after all those failures. This felt like one more hurdle that my students, with their Japanese, could leap against the backdrop of a pink sunset, while I was still stretching near the soccer net, unsure my hamstrings wouldn’t snap. I gathered my books and waterbottle and trudged off to the bathroom where I planned to let myself cry until I realized with the tile it was echoing back on itself twenty times, and anyone walking by could hear my sniffling wailing coming from the third stall. So I pulled myself together, turned to flush my sopping kleenexes down the toilet, and as I bent to pick up my books I head a noticeable thud. I whipped around, and there in the throat of the toilet was my white cell phone, already being sucked down by the toilet’s whirlpool. I reached down and snatched it, and as I pulled it up I started crying again because not only did I now have to deal with more car problems, but now I’d waterlogged my phone.

So, like a sad person who lives in their car, I went out and sat in the driver’s seat and cried over my wet phone, and my sickness decided to try for a comeback so I blew my nose many times and drank water to soothe my sore throat. Then I got quite sleepy, as one does after such an emotional release, and I would have leaned back my seat and taken a little snooze, but my phone didn’t work after it’s bath, so I had no way to set an alarm to wake me up for sixth period. I cried a little more at the weird twist fate had twirled me into, and then I waited for the redness to leave my face and I went back into the teacher’s room to write more fake speeches.

What does it all mean? I was under debate’s thumb, but now that the students are safely flying across the Pacific Ocean I’m free to imagine other uses for my free time. Green Tea Sensei snuck my to my desk this morning to tell me the flower arranging club will meet this afternoon, but after three weeks of staying late, all I want to do is head home when 4:15 shows up on the clock, to climb into my warm bed and read a book or watch tv on my computer. I want my boring life back. So, in the interest of mundane afternoon tasks, Johnathan and I dumped out a 1,000 piece puzzle on our coffee table last night. We sorted the border pieces from the middles, pulled out of the four corners, and are planning to start a full-scale assembly tonight. That’s really all the excitement I want for awhile.

P.S. Call it a Great Pumpkin miracle, but these days the phone works swimmingly.

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Level up!

One of our debaters really gets debate. He has “level upped” as Gonzo Sensei says, which means he understands the straight arrow logic of English and isn’t still speaking in the spiral of Japanese thought. Today is our first match between the two teams who are going to the debate tournament in three short weeks, and they’re scrambling this rainy afternoon to get their arguments in a row.

“Ryosuke knows their negative argument,” Gonzo Sensei says, “so he ran off to find research to attack them.” The girls on the other team come to us, begging us to stop him. “It’s so typically Ryosuke,” Gonzo Sensei says. “He wants to be as prepared as he can be.” This is the boy who rebuts everything we talk about in our meetings, who can attack any idea. He has flowcharts for cross-examination and a mountain of articles on his desk. We hi-lite the same important quotes.

“I’m not going to stop him,” Gonzo Sensei says, “they just have to prepare their response. This is what I told them.” So these two teams who were previously working together, who shared crepes the other night as a special treat, are now eyeing each other warily, using their elbows and knees to hide their evidence sheets, running off behind each others’ backs to research evidence on the computer. They secretly bring their notebooks into the teacher’s room for us to check their English.

For once I’m going to do all I can to encourage this competition. Because in the end they will have to face teams from 10 other schools, and if they they find their worst, most aggressive enemies are wearing the same uniform–well, the actual competition will seem like a coach’s dream.

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