Winter Wind Blows

Get it?? Get it??

This is shaping up to be my least favorite week in quite a long while. The winter always gives me a deep-in-the-bones kind of lethargy. But this winter is especially nasty. I don't know whether it is the weight I've lost, the muscle I've gained, or more likely the insanely cold weather we have been having (it's solar radiation goddamn it not global warming!). Whatever the case, most days here seem like an uphill battle. My apartment is bone chillingly cold a lot of the time-I can see my breath most nights and some mornings, too. People will praise the Japanese for their inventiveness but they can't bring themselves to use it to come up with a wabisabi-friendly version of housing insulation. And people say American culture is stubborn!

This week has also been one of eating heavily. Now, part of it is my portion sizing ability being out of control. Part of it is being lonely (yeah yeah boo hoo). Part of it is going on dates and seeing friends (and I'm lonely??) and those events involve meals out. And part of it has been old fashioned laziness: I am too damn cold for scrubbing pots and simmering things. It all goes back to the weather- that's the reason I'm lying here stuffed to the gills with grilled meat. Well, that and Mariko's all-you-can-eat buffet idea. And I could have deterred her ... but I'll admit ... I was curious.

Wouldn't you be? Japanese "viking" restaurants are infamously full of strange and exotic experiences. There was one whole wall filled with raw meat, fish, vegetables, and strange (raw) pieces of sub-surface ocean dwellers. God alone knows what I ate today. That much comes from not really understanding what the kanji said. Additionally, cow is cow and pig is pork. Who the hell knows loin from shoulder when it's red, raw, and right in front of you? I did spot the kimchi, though. And the garlic bulbs (they were tasteless when BBQed!) In addition there was thai curry soup, steak fries, assorted fried crap, sushi in many varieties (none delicious), fruit salad, macaroni salad, potato salad, macaroni salad, corn and cabbege to make Japanese salad, salad dressing, cream puffs, cake, pudding, jello, coconut milk and fruit salad, and god alone knows what else. Most of it was dissappointing in quality, but in Japan if you pick it up you eat it. I paid the price of my eyes being bigger than my stomache. But enough of that.

In addition to this I have a new teacher who is insistant on chatting me up about a lesson she wants to do on American commercials. I hate commercials, come to think of it, I fucking hate TV too. So why, in the name of God or kami or whatever, would I like commercials? Unfortunately this kind of lesson is a staple of recent Japanese oral English lessons. Every English teacher plans it, most of them actually do it. I guess for a new ALT or an ALT with motivated students, or even an ALT with cute students (hello Helena) this could be a great project. I've seen some great ones and they didn't even all include cross dressing (although quite a number of them did). But my students (edit 2/13/06: no they don't ...) suck. There are some that are good, but they lack imagination. The ones with imagination lack intelligence, or at least motivation to get off their lazy butts to do something more than dick around in my classes. And they get worse every year-there's a shout out going round that FT is a great school with easy teachers and fun times. I'll second that and add that it's a major factor in me being glad to get the hell off the JET program.

The whole point of this is that I am stuck with a teacher who has a huge bee in her bonnet about copying some lesson she saw at a summer seminar. I read the hand out she gave me, I did. But most of it doesn't translate well into something that our happy bunch of hooligans are going to care about. I am done with pretending that my class matters (edit: I'm sure it does matter...) . I will not try to pound an intellectual point about repitition, loaded phrasing or subliminal advertising into a bunch of kids who are all going to write their shit at home the night before we tape stuff. I am not going to do that anymore. But I am not mature enough to admit this to her in a way that will not hurt her feelings. She is a nice lady, although a little weird sometimes, and I do not want to upset her. So right now I have to suffer through her repeating her points over, and over again. Then asking me what I think, which is hard to determine since she is stating facts not opening a discussion. Sometimes I really hate the language divide.

The language divide- that's another thing that I hate. People here are great to me. But they never listen. I understand that it is that way at home, too. But at least with a common language they can't pretend they are too bad at my language to undersand. Oh no, you would understand if you would listen. Don't hide behind your false pretenses. Everyone does that to me and it pains me to speak to some people these days. Real, physical pain in the area around my heard and under my left arm. Although, that could just be the impending heart attack from all the crummy rice omlets and oily student lunches I have been eating recently.

Oh well. At least it's February- so far the month of the cold, grueling rain. And after this is March the month of pseudo spring and irritating three day English camps in god-knows-what piss-ass little patch of scrub forest we can scrounge up in Osaka to hold our shit in. But I'm not bitter about being roped into that, oh, not at all. 100 bucks isn't enough for three days of hell in which a bunch of overly chipper (mostly female) students will debate in bad English while primping, singing, complaining or flirting with the male English teachers (edit: I just told someone today that it was more than enough money and that I would do it for none ... hmm ...). And for all this we get camp swill and 630am wake up calls. (Radio Edit). This was the mother of all guilt trips. Oh, how I hate teaching high school. But you are right, dad, it's a hell of a lot better than digging ditches.

That's much better. God help me if someone actually reads this shit (edit: Hi Jason!). However, I suspect it is only me, myself and I on here. Peace, I'm outta here.