Hello,

I haven't written an e-mail lately because we have been so busy sightseeing and going out with other Nova teachers. Last weekend we walked 6 hours a day. We took a ferry to Uminonakamichi Seaside Park and three subway and train lines to the Dazaifu Shrine. We had a great time, and I took about 150 pictures! Luckily a few of them turned out really well. My camera is awesome! It is the best purchase I (we) ever made. Now John (our old roommate) is burning the digital negatives to cd so we don't loose them. My laptop is working worse and worse since we got to Japan. Maybe Japanese software doesn't mix with English hardware. I don't know.

Anyways, on to the subject of this e-mail: Ghost Day. Yes, I am serious. August 15th is ghost day. In Buddhist religious beliefs, all ancestors come back to Earth to visit their living relatives on the middle day in August. Since Japanese are usually both Buddhist and Shinto, that means that this is the second most important day in Japan. It is second to New Year's day. So, I am a little afraid of August 15th. I guess that every house burns a small fire on their balcony, so that the smoke can welcome the spirits into their house. There certainly won't be a fire on our balcony, but I will beware of our apartment burning down. It sounds dangerous. It is also the second most expensive time of the year to travel. I guess that ghosts can only be in one place at a time, so they can't visit all their descendents in different cities. Therefore, people travel back to their hometowns to meet their ancestors. That is why it is so expensive to travel during the few days before and after August 15th. So if you were considering visiting us, it is awfully crowded in Japan in the middle of August.

Many people here believe in ghosts. They ask me if Canadians believe in ghosts too. I tell them that most British Columbians don't because BC is too young to have ghosts, but Newfounlanders believe in ghosts. I remember that Teena blamed every strange occurance on ghosts. In Japan people believe that a handful of salt on either side of your door will keep ghosts out. I don't mind that so much, except that the restaurant that is on the bottom floor of our apartment building has two piles of salt beside the door. Why do they think they need the salt? Have they seen ghosts? Our floor creaks. Sometimes the toilet doesn't turn off, and sometimes we wake up to the bathroom tap running. One night our tv turned on all by itself. It was playing the X-Files. The remote was in the living room, and we were in the bedroom. Then we found the door unlocked that morning. What do you think, Teena?

Yesterday I walked into class and introduced myself. I then asked the three students to introduce themselves. A fifty year old lady started first. She said that she is a housewife who draws pictures for postcards and writes Haiku poems as hobbies. Then she said she was finished and refused to say more. When the next student started introducing himself, she brought out a sketch pad, and proceeded to spend the rest of the class drawing my portrait. Talk about unnerving. She was disinterested in the class, and didn't want to participate, but she paid for it. So if I see my portrait on a postcard I promise I will buy a copy for all of you back home!

I had another student who is now a doctor. The subject of our lesson was embarrassing experiences, and he was a high-level student. I asked if they had any embarrassing experiences that they wanted to share with the class. He told his story, and I'm not sure if I believe it. I have always heard that Japanese students study very hard, and often out-perform their Western counterparts academically. This man said he was studying very hard for an exam to become a doctor. He fell asleep at his desk, sitting in his chair. The only problem was that his foot was under the leg of his chair. When he woke up, his foot was very swollen and painful. He went to the emergency room. His foot was broken, and he had to tell the doctor how it happened.

I also taught a five year old genius child. Our kid's classes are set up to teach kids to say "swimming" when we hold up a flashcard with a picture of someone swimming on it. Very simple. Then we play games where the kids compete to grab the right flashcard when the teacher says "swimming". This kid knew the word before I had finished turning the flashcard over. He was kind of cocky, so I decided to make it more difficult. I wrote the corresponding words on more flashcards, and asked him to match the word to the picture. No problem. We had about 20 different picture action cards, and 20 word cards to match. I turned them over, spread them around the table, and asked him to choose the matching picture and word cards. No problem. He had an amazing memory which was remarkably better than mine. Now I didn't know what to do, but he looked up at me as if he had me beat. So I challenged him. I took away the word cards, and held up the picture cards, one at a time. I told him to write "swimming". Again, he amazed me. He even spelled it correctly. So I responded, "No, no. Write a whole sentance." So he wrote, " I like to go swimming"! Why didn't anyone warn me that this kid knows English as a second language better than most English kids. At five years old you are supposed to be learning the alphabet, not writing sentances. Maybe they do study harder in Japan. My next kid's class was the opposite. He sat on his mother's lap the entire 40 minutes, while I tried to get him to interact with me. It was the longest 40 minutes of my life, with the mother staring at me, and the kid crying on his mother's shoulder.

Now that I think of it, I have met some pretty strange Canadians too. But we won't go into that.

May 29, 2004

Hello,

It is the morning after the International Party. We had a blast! Phil is still sleeping. Every once in a while he rolls over and moans. I feel great. There were about 50 people there, from all over the world. I met some really nice people. It turns out that I had the price wrong for the Kimonoes (fancy Japanese dresses). I guess that they cost about $10,000 US. They sure are beautiful. One lady said she took classes for 3 years to learn about Kimonoes and how to wear them. They are a labyrinth of layers and knots. There are no buttons or zippers anywhere, only cloth wrapped in a certain way and rope knots. The backpack thing is just folds of cloth for decoration. We met people from the US, Mexico, Iran, Italy, some Muslim country near South Africa (I forget the name), England, Ireland, France, Australia, New Zealand, and lots of Japanese people. We were at a very fancy restaurant, and everyone was really dressed up. We had a huge buffet of Japanese and Western food, and two bartenders serving us free drinks. We played some mingling games, such as the "find someone who" game. Some of the games were half in English and half in Japanese, so you had to team up with a Japanese person to accomplish the task. We had a lot of fun.

After the party a few of us went to the International Bar for more drinks. We had 12 people, so the owner said we could each pay $25 and then we could drink anything off the menu for free for two hours. Once he saw how much Gaijin (foreigners) can drink he cut us off after 1 1/2 hours. I don't blame him. I taught the Japanese what B52's are. They asked me what B52 means. I didn't have the guts to tell a bunch of drunk Japanese that B52 is the name of the airplane that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. If you haven't tried them, they are the tastiest shot you can do. Kahlua, Bailey's, and then Vodka, in that order in one shot glass. It looks pretty because they don't mix so it is in layers. At the end of the night, Phil had to carry one of the Japanese men out of the bar and put him in a taxi with his friend. Phil said he was a featherweight, and he could have carried him all the way home, but that might have been the alcohol talking.

It has suddenly turned extremely hot and humid here. Yesterday reached 30 degrees, and the brick sidewalk was dewy even though it didn't rain all day. Rain is predicted for the next 4 days, though the students say it is predicted for the next two months. They tell me that this is nothing, and I will understand what heat and humidity really is in two weeks. I'll let you know. I don't know if I can handle wearing this constant scarf of hair for much longer. We have packed up most of our warm clothes in our suitcases with lots of silicia. The only useful coat now is a rain slicker. I now know how useful umbrellas are. The students don't believe that I didn't even own an umbrella in Canada. They have rain umbrellas and sun umbrellas. They hide from both. The good thing is I can tell the wind direction and speed by looking out my window and seeing the angle they hold their umbrellas at.

I hope you are all healthy and happy, and enjoying you Canadian life. I am trying my best to enjoy my Japanese one. I keep remembering "Life is what you make it."

June 17, 2004

Hello Everyone, I'm still here.

I didn't think it would ever happen. I am finally enjoying my life here in Fukuoka enough that I don't feel a desperate need to type a 2 hour long e-mail to everyone in Canada every few days. It has almost been four months since we stepped foot on this island, and my hyper-sensitivity has finally dulled to a bearable drone. I used to jump every time I heard an ambulance whizzing by our house with paper-thin walls. I used to get horribly irritated whenever a person on a loudspeaker slowly drove by, screaming an advertisement out their car window. I used to look each person in the eye on a crowded sidewalk, veering left and right, trying to avoid walking into them. Now I don't even notice the sirens or the loudspeakers. Now I just walk down the street without looking at people and we magically avoid running into each other. When I crack open an egg I expect the deep yellow yolk instead of the pale yellow one I have grown accustomed to from Canada. I go shopping with a backpack so I can carry everything home. I don't even flinch at the layers upon layers of packaging I have to get through to eat something. I wash my styrofoam containers and walk them downstairs to the recycling bin at the 7-11. I automatically say Konn-ichi-wa (good afternoon) to my neighbours, and Sue-me-ma-sen (excuse me) when I bump into someone, or when I need to get off a crowded elevator or subway train. I can even read my Anne of Green Gables book on the subway coming home from work, touching other people on all sides of me, standing with my feet apart and knees bent to absorb the sudden starts and stops of the train. Yesterday a little old man ran into a pole, because he was staring at me, and I laughed rather than scowled at him. I send and receive text-messages (like e-mail) on my cell phone instead of using it as a telephone. I run the bath water and then heat it up, without thinking. I walk up the four flights of stairs to my apartment without losing my breath. I can even separate my garbage without reading the little booklet anymore. I think in yen instead of dollars.

All this only took four months.

June 19, 2004

Hello to all my friends and family,

You had better all be enjoying that Canadian weather! I can't believe the weather here. Today it got to 32 degrees, and the humidity was 79%, so it felt like 36 degrees in a sauna. The low is going to be 25 degrees at night. We haven't worn coats in about three weeks. I finally know what "too hot" feels like. It is relentless. We keep the air conditioner going all night now. Japanese houses have no insulation, so as soon as you turn off the airconditioning, it starts to warm up again. Luckily it is nicely airconditioned at our offices. I can't wear my hair down any more because it is like wearing a scarf, and my neck gets all wet. Our dresscode for work is: no open-toed shoes, no sleeveless shirts or dresses, and you must wear nylons or stockings with skirts or dresses, and you must wear socks with dress pants. Poor Phil has to wear a collared shirt and tie. I have to do laundry almost every day because we can't wear anything twice, and the washing machine is half the size of a Western one. Lately we have been showering and changing clothes right before going to work at five o'clock, and still arriving at work wet. I pack baby-wipes in my purse to dry my skin in the bathroom before I start work. Dad warned me that it would be like living in a sauna, but I didn't believe him. The strange thing is when we arrived in late February is was quite cold. When we woke up in the morning the indoor thermometer said 12 degrees sometimes. Now when we come home from work at 9:30 pm our indoor thermometer says 32 degrees. I am told that the worst is yet to come. Yikes!

Tomorrow we are going to meet up with another Nova teacher who is going to stay with us for a few days. We met him in the Vancouver airport on our way here, and he was on the same 11 hour flight as us. We spent a day in Osaka with him, so we only know him a little. His name is Darren Chow, and he's from Edmonton. Anyways, he lives in a tiny city about two hours south of Fukuoka, and he wants to experience the "excitement" of "big city life." I guess this is a big city because the population is 1.3 million, but I don't consider it big because it is comprised of very little land, and very tall buildings. I can take the subway less than 25 minutes in any direction and be outside of Fukuoka city. We will show him our list of places to bring guests and our pictures and ask him what he wants to see around Fukuoka. My students have warned me that there may be a typhoon on Monday, so that could spoil our plans for one day. I taught them the idiom, "Don't cry wolf" because they have told me a typhoon is coming before and it never happened. I try to teach them how to joke because they are too serious. Phil does a lesson on how to brag, because they don't do that either. We are told by Nova (our employer) to teach them how to express an opinion. For generations they have been forced to keep their opinions to themselves because Japan is so small and so populated that too many opinions would disrupt the peace. It is funny, because I can walk into class, say something totally absurd, and ask them their opinion, and they will just agree with me! If a student ever does give and opinion on anything, all the other students immediately nod their heads and hmmmm an agreement. Just try setting up a debate. They all just agree with anything that is said, and you have to stop the lesson repeatedly and remind them what a debate is. However, many students say they come to Nova classes because of the freedom it gives them to discuss controversial topics and have an opinion. By controversial I mean topics such as "do cats or dogs make better pets?", or "which is a better place to visit, Kyoto or Nagasaki?". During Phil's last voice lesson, when the bell rang he asked "any last thoughts?" and when all the students all looked at him quizzically he had to explain what "thoughts" are!!!

I met the funniest student a couple of days ago. He made me laugh all the way home, and again when I reiterated the story to Phil. This student is a 45 year old painter. He comes to class with paint all over his body and clothes. He picked up a pet ferret at the animal hospital a couple of months ago. He showed me a picture of his ferret on his cell phone (cell phones here double as digital cameras). I said, "What a cute ferret" and he replied, "No, not cute. That is what I thought about my old girlfriend too. They only look cute. It bites me and scratches me everyday. I hold it with both hands around its neck and stare it in the eyes. I tell it, 'I feed you, I clean your cage, and I pet you, but you bite me. Do you not know who your master is? Why do you not attach to me?' It is exactly like my old girlfriend, it won't attach to me. So, I named it after my old girlfriend, Yumiko. Then I phoned my old girlfriend and told her so." He said all this with a straight face, and he honestly couldn't figure out why something he held around the neck and declared himself a master of wouldn't "attach" to him.

June 28, 2004

Hello,

Well, our weekend with Darren, an Edmontonian and a Nova teacher working in Tokuhama city, went well. We assumed he wanted tour guides for his trip to Fukuoka, but it turned out that he just wanted a free place to sleep and some advice on where to sightsee. Oh well, that worked out better because we saved money, and we can do the sightseeing stuff with Brittany in less than two weeks.

That's right, my sister Brittany is coming to visit us! Yaaaay! She is coming July 9th to the 23rd. We are very excited. I have already made some shift-swaps and applied for unpaid leave so I can have a few days off. And I started making lists. I have one list of all the places to take her, and one list of all the strange kinds of food and restaurants to show her. I added a Sri-lanka (spelling?) restaurant to the list yesterday. It's on the 5th floor in the centre of the city, amidst countless towering buidings. One wall is completely glass, and the tables are pushed almost against the glass, so the view is amazing. I have never tasted food quite like it before. It was excellent, but they charged us $12 more than the menu said. Maybe it is the infamous "gaijin tax" (foreigners pay more because they don't understand anyways).

We are heading out for a 30 minute walk to the theatre to see Harry Potter. We had a good afternoon hike today for about 2 hours to a riverside park we heard about that turned out to be a sidewalk with grass and a few benches and vending machines along a river. Oh well, it was exciting to go exploring and see something new.

July 4, 2004

Here are some real stumpers. Quotes from my students thusfar.

Introduction: "Hello, my name is Shay. I come from Canada."

Response: "Hello, my name is Maa-me. I have a mental problem. I am on medication."

Introduction game: "Please write down 6 words or numbers and the rest of the class will try to guess why those words or numbers are important to you. For example, I will write "Mexico" and "22". Why did I write those things? Because I went to Mexico for my honeymoon recently and I am 22 years old. Now you try it." 50 year old male student writes "money" "wife and children" and "ladies". He said he wrote those words because he is rich, he has a wife and children, and he likes ladies because they say nice things to him and they are pretty, but you need money to buy all ladies. When the under 20 female student wrote "flowers", he asked her, "did you write flowers because you are beautiful like a flower?" Luckily she laughed so I didn't have to teach him about appropriateness.

One lesson is about comparisons, and it inevitably turns into comparisons between Canada and Japan because they ask so many questions about Canada. A student asked me, are the salaries higher in Japan than they are in Canada. I said that they probably are, but the cost of living is also higher. When I refused to tell him how much money I make, he grabbed my pad of paper and wrote down, "Nothing is lower than Nova teacher salaly." (They can't distinguish between the L and the R sound so he spelled salary wrong.) To my astonishment, he said that if I don't want to hand in the piece of paper to the Japanese Nova staff, that he would do it for me. I couldnt' tell if it was a threat or not, because they don't use emotion in their voices, instead they use different words to convey meaning in Japanese. Luckily he had a smile on his face, so I assumed he was playing a game. I took the pad of paper away from him as quickly as he took it from me, and I changed the topic of the lesson.

No matter how amazing the student's responses can be, the worst is when they don't respond at all. We have a few high-school and junior high school students whose parents have decided that they should learn English. The students just look like a deer in the headlights. They stare at their books and refuse to say a single word. 40 minutes is a long time to talk to yourself. Sometimes I resort to pointing to pictures and saying what is in the picture.

Actually, maybe it is worse when the student brings in a long list of questions written on a piece of paper. For example, "What is the difference between cute, pretty, and beautiful?" Or, "What is the grammatical difference between 'I want to be married by 30' and 'I want to get married by 30'?" Or, "Why do you say, 'it is on the third floor', not 'it is on the three floor'?" How about, "What does anyways mean?" Ahhhhhh!

Today was my last day of work for this week. At nine o'clock at night I was standing outside my office, waiting for the elevator to bring me down 13 flights to the underground subway station. Then I hear, "heh-woh", and I realize that the student I just finished teaching is standing behind me, trying to say hello. So I do my best to make pleasant small talk with her, very slowly, and ofter having to repeat what I am trying to say. She follows me down the elevator, and into the subway station, trying to make friends with me by saying things like, "Tomorrow I go to shopping." So I ask her where she lives. It just so happens that she lives very close to me and she rides the subway at the same time I do every day. I just can't be rude to her, but it feels like (I imagine) being set up on a blind date that you didn't agree to, and instantly deciding that this is not the person for you. Luckily it is Nova's policy that we are not allowed to associate with our students outside of Nova, otherwise the students get a free English lesson and that doesn't benefit Nova or the teachers. The only problem is that I have to get her to understand the policy, in English, if I see her again.