Everything Old Is New Again – Part Two

Well, sort of new. Maybe Everything Old Is Like Finding A Chest of Poems You’ve Forgotten About would have been a better title. I am unsure of the name of this town I am teaching my second week of the new block. Usually the train station and the town share the same name but this week I have two possible choices. But there’s the Big Boy so who cares! One of the small things I was mourning when I changed teaching blocks was the loss of my all you can eat salad bar at the Tenri Big Boy restaurant. Gone, I thought, were the plates of fresh vegetables, macaroni salad and that sesame seed dressing that is worth starting wars over. Outside the station today, on my way to the class, I saw the familiar Big Boy sign above the homes, businesses and apartments and five more months of salad bar goodness awaits. I wonder how I had missed it before. Three times I have been to this school and I’ve passed it on numerous occasions on my way to one of my old classes. The billboard on the station platform is one not to be forgotten. On it is a picture of a rather large man with a full beard. He looks like a lumberjack. The man sits in a bubbling hot-tub with a grin as wide as the equator running across his bearded mug. Under him reads: I AM BASS. THIS IS BATH. This, my friends, is Engrish at it’s side splitting best. I posted the photo here a few months ago when I first spied the billboard. I had to hop of the train and wait for the next one to get the shot but it was worth it. Each time I passed the billboard I would smile. The thing still busts me up and now I work in front of it. I am trying to figure how this translation came about and, a better question, why is it in English anyway? Do the Japanese really need over weight Americans masquerading as fish to sell them their hot tubs? Instantly I can think of a better advertising campaign to sell these things to the Japanese. Get yourself a nice shot of a beautiful woman neck deep in a tub over looking a beautiful sunset. She is surrounded by mountains and next to her is a half full (or half empty if you are one of those types) glass of red wine. Her expression is of pure relaxation. The ad text would read in Japanese: Like Having an Onsen At Home. Tada! Not only are you marketing a product by using a staple of Japanese culture but also you’ve supplemented a large, bearded lumberjack of a man for a slender, Asian woman not claiming to be a fish at all. You tell me, which one of these is going to get you to shell out your Yen for a hot tub? I thought so. I’m a cash cow all you advertising execs out there scanning internet sites for fresh, young talent.

Oh yes, the Relaxation Weed Space. Things keep getting funnier. The Relaxation Weed Space is not a pot café, a communal meeting place for hippies or what my uncle calls his living room but the name of a spa franchise here in Japan. Like the bass man, you really have to wonder why the Japanese bother with English translations in the first place. How often do you see a large Canadian chain of businesses named in Swahili? Makes no sense, right? We can’t read it! We’ll get out Chinese joints named Eat Long Dong and we’ll snicker and giggle but overall we’re all about placing the English language in signs, on billboards and in bright, flashy neon. When asked why the Japanese use English so much I was told: “Because it’s fashionable.” Interesting. In Canada pogs, the Macarana and Pauly Shore are considered fads. In Japan it’s English adverts and business names. The nuances of culture continue to amaze. The Relaxation Weed Space is directly under the classroom and it's too bad it is not what the name insinuates that it is because I am sure pumping in puffs of weed into the classroom would really subdue the kids. Yes, I’d have to keep a supply of chips, rice balls and sushi in the class but a small price to pay for relaxed kids. “That dog, man…that dog on the card, man, it’s moving but it’s not really moving man. Oh man.” Then again watching most Japanese television is like being on a strange drug trip so maybe nobody would notice a difference. The girls in the Relaxation Weed Space give me a smile. I smile back. The roots of flirting. Maybe one day I’ll pop into that place and see what it’s all about but probably not.

This class is another large one but not the mansion that the last one was. I found that I was not the only new face these kids would be seeing. This class has not had a Japanese teacher for a few months so every week somebody new comes to see them. It has also been this way with us foreign staff. From looking at the class notes nearly everybody in my teaching group has been here at least once. This causes some problems. The obvious one is that the kids have no constant to look to as all their teachers are new. Each of them bring different styles and attitudes and this leads to a bit of confusion. It also leads to messy classrooms. Without a regular teacher the subs tend to drop and run after a lesson is completed and so flash cards are not organized, supplies are scattered or missing and, like this classroom, you wander into the bathroom, drop trow and discover you have no toilet paper. From the look of the place nobody had run a vacuum in weeks and from the place smelled of mold and mildew. I cracked some windows and did a quick clean of the place making notes of what was missing and what would have to be ordered or replaced. At the top of the list was a new white board. Our white boards are like blackboards back home and are the things used most in our lessons. I use them for games, mainly, but I also place up text prompters and notes for students on the board. The board in this class was marred by a kid or teacher (and I am willing to bet a teacher) who chose a permanent marker over an erasable one. The board is black and stained and though you can manage with it something so prominent in a lesson should be a bit more presentable.

With all this in mind, it was another phone call to my area manager. I’ve been giving her quite the headache the last few weeks although I can’t be blighted for any of it. First was lacking the key to move in the new teacher. Then it was lacking my own keys to my schools. Then it was the discovery that one of those keys was the wrong key. Then, yesterday, when writing in my lesson reports I found that another foreign teacher had taught here on Saturday doing the lessons that I was supposed to do in a few days and with another phone call I was told that I didn’t have to teach on Saturday. Well, thanks for passing that small bit of information on, folks! If I hadn’t have called would I have just showed up to an empty room? Nobody over at our support staff could tell me if I had the day off, one of those filler days and it was even suggested I might have to teach the Japanese teacher’s lessons. Without anything concrete I provided another headache for the area manager who apologized for the trouble. She’s actually a very nice woman and I don’t mind talking to her. It actually bugs me that all these slip ups are placed square on her shoulders at the moment because we do not have a supervisor (he left in September). Things were resolved in my favor as Saturday has become a day off and now a long weekend. During one of our many conversations in the last few days (I also had to talk to her about my resignation in February as things have to be started to initiate my departure months in advance) she mentioned that I would be adding another class to my schedule in two weeks. If enough students are solicited by the sales staff to join another class opens up. The first month are special lessons taught with a Japanese teacher in front of parents. Yikes! Shouldn’t be so bad although the class, of all four that could have been the place for one of these to prop up, is that far location reached by those messed up train lines. And, finally, the biggest piece of meat on my plate right now is having to change my immigration card. The Company has decided to change names and we have been given 15 days to change our cards with our town halls to include the new business name. Errors in these cards can get you deported so I’ve penciled in a meeting to get things fixed up. A new boss comes in by the end of the month, I have to start looking at flights home, there are still two more new schools to visit and that parent observation to look ahead to. October is becoming a loaded month and right now I am missing the days when all I cared about at this time of year was costumes and candy.