Kogai Ni

Being outdoors, dudes!  It's a thing, as I've recently learned.  You won't recall me talking about my first camping trip here, because I so deftly skimmed over it.  That was about a month ago, I guess; we went to go see this badass taiko drum concert on Sado, an island just off the coast beyond Niigata City, with a bunch of the other Niigata JETs.  We brought our gear with us to the island; after the concert, we set up camp on the beach, made a bonfire, checked out the stunning night sky--I saw more shooting stars that I ever had in one night--and generally mucked around like the college students most of us are deep down.  (Okay, maybe it's just me.  What?  I've been out of school for less than a semester now.)  Being sort of out in the countryside as it is, I'm not too starved for contact with nature, but it's still nice to really bust outta Dodge.  You know, get away from the sounds of people, breath in some really fresh air, and get your ass woken up at six by the sunrise.  I would like to emphasize that that latter item really did happen.  I was confused because it looked like broad daylight outside, and also because I had netted myself  something like three hours of sleep.  It took my tent mates a few solid minutes to fully persuade me that it was, in fact, death o'clock in the morning.  After that, I stumbled into the surf--this proved to be a good way to wake up, one I wish I could replicate at home.  (Maybe if I hauled in some sand, flooded my bathroom…wait, this sounds suspiciously familiar.)

So there's a lot that I'm skipping over from that trip--notably, how I ran into one of my coworkers while hefting a one-liter bottle of beer, plus hanging out with this one guy who's been teaching English for fourteen years! --but I must push on, lest I wind up writing about mid-October on my winter vacation.   This camping trip marked our official, prefecture-wide welcome party, the culminating event after a bunch of smaller-scale welcome shindigs we'd attended both in Gosen and elsewhere.  The venue, the ground zero of our jubilee, was a campground a couple of hours south of us.  After a quite scenic drive, we arrived some three bajillion hours before the festivities were to commence.  As the only three people there, Carly, Amanda, and myself began setting up camp.  Permit me one moment to describe the place.  The first of two general parts was the actual grounds itself, a small, open area of neatly manicured grass.  Connected by a short bridge over a small creek were the cabins and other stuff (office, bathrooms, etc.) arranged around a paved communal area.  This bland description doesn't do much justice to the place, but suffice it to say that it was a pretty sweet deal, quite conducive to a large social gathering, and better kept than I would expect a campsite that's further in the countryside to be.

We began constructing our sweet tent, borrowed from our friend and de facto host mother, Rumi.  This was the same tent we had used on Sado; then,  we were forced to delay setup until midnight after a solid night of, well, concert, and so did not efficiently nor one hundred percent effectively put our tent up.  (Also, sand.)  This time around, however, we had the leisure to properly erect a veritable fortress, the envy of our fellow campers.  Carly was pleased, Amanda doubly so--as I understand it, the average Minnesotan spends thirty weeks out of the year camping.  Our frequent companion from the town next to us, Kristyn, was amazed beyond words when she arrived later--which is to say not literally "beyond words."  Kristyn fills an important niche in my social constellation, that of an avid purveyor of dry humor, which is, shall we say, not as common as rice in Japan.  She's an excellent foil to my style of outrageous hyperbole and embellishment; so when I began to expound on the great toil we had endured, she adroitly cut me off with a terse sentiment along the lines of, "Uh huh, sure."  Borderline sardonic, maybe, but it hurts good.  Also we talk about beer in a scholarly fashion, a hobby I miss much from the halcyon days of my college career.  You know, like six months ago.

We went to scope out a nearby park and shrine before the rest of the nerds began to arrive.  On this expedition, we accrued, Katamari-like, an entourage of small children who happened to be playing while we visited.  They were very interested in America, although we had to disabuse one of them of the notion that America and Japan are geographically contiguous and also the same country.  Another persistently inquired into the logistics of currency exchange.  "Do they hold the money for you until you come back?"  Now that would be a sweet deal, you guys.  In short, they were quite adorable.  When we left, they followed us back to camp, which was something of a cause for concern on my part.  I was rather unclear on the protocol regarding unaccompanied minors following strangers around; I know that the American legal code classifies that as a "party foul" worth ten years in the pen.  (In all seriousness though, it's interesting how much autonomy they give little kids here.  I haven't any facts or figures to persuade you, but outside of school these small fries roam quite freely.)  As the rest of Foreigner Squadron Alpha began to drift in, we played tag (or as it's called here, oni gokko, "play [at being a] devil") with the kids.  I only visit my elementary schools for half-days each, therefore I haven't had the opportunity to participate in after-lunch tag with students.   So I was mega blown away at the energy these kids had; they were firing on all cylinders all the time.  Eventually one of their mothers came by to pick them up, much to the relief of my exhausted body.  Now, it was time to get down to the serious business of socializing.

The grill was fired up as we foreigners accumulated, and we congregated in the common area by the cabins.  At this point there's not much more I can say other than we had a right old time; grilled noms and beverages aplenty, someone's iPod blasting from somewhere, nerds jamming out on guitar, frequent trips to pee in the woods (in spite of the fully functional toilets), a dance party, s'mores cooked over an open fire.  What began as a duel of good old fashioned Wizard's Staff between two friends turned into a campsite full of wizards, culminating in an actual wizard battle (which I did not realize was stipulated in the rules).  It was just a good time, you know?  Like, pick a good party you hit up at school.  (Maybe one year at Don't Mess with Texas, or an O-Week crawl.)  The crazy thing is how immersed I find myself in our big get-togethers.  Part of it, of course, is that during the week I don't see people or go out, on account of how spread out we are and this crazy new schedule I'm trying out wherein I actually manage more than six hours of sleep.  But just being around my JET friends, hanging out en masse, I experience two things:  First, I nearly forget that I'm Japan.  This is a little ridiculous--especially because there are usually some Japanese friends-of-friends whom I end up chatting with-- but regardless, that's the sensation comes over me.  Second, I sort of quietly marvel at how normal it all is.  Coming to Niigata, I had a hunch that it would be an active bunch, so I guess I should've anticipated that there would be some proper partying going on.  But, as with so many things here, it's what's similar and familiar that stands out more than the big differences.  I think that's because, even having had some experience with Japan, I've mentally (perhaps unconsciously) positioned myself more on a footing to anticipate and process the differences, which of course are abundant.  But that apparatus has no function to account for the similarities I find in my lifestyle.  I don't want it to sound like I'm paralyzed by massive cognitive dissonance every waking second, because I'm not.   Rather, it's a vibe that's there in the back of my head.   When I zone out sometimes, it hums a little louder, to the tune of, "Whoa, I'm in Japan.  So much is different, but sometimes I can't even tell because I just feel…normal."  That's something I experience in small ways, like hanging out in our happy little threesome at the end of the day, and in bigger ways, like this rad camping trip.

Oh, and I nearly forgot to tell you about the first burger I had since I've been here.  Man.  Okay.  Gotta back it up a little bit.  We went to the mall a little ways out to pick up gear for camping, right?  I'd already been to this mall before.  We weren't sure what we felt like for dinner, so we wound up at some place in the food court that sorta had everything.  Among other items on the menu were, you know, burgers.  I thought about it.  I went for it.  And man, it was good.  I mean, the burger itself was tasty--not like a Perigord, but better than a fast food thing--but rarely have I had a single item of food affect me so profoundly.  I just felt good, like my whole body had just been massaged.  I hadn't even realized how badly I'd wanted a burger until I put my mouth on it; at those specific coordinates in space and time, that was exactly what I needed.  Amanda put it well when she noted that eating a meal like that is a completely different kind of full from the usual Japanese fare we have.  And I could feel that in my stomach, so forgotten yet so familiar, like going home over the summer and seeing your high school friends again.  Since I was on such a roll, we went to Baskin Robbins afterwards.  Did I mention it was pay day that day?  We were in a mood of excessiveness that night.  The cherry on top was discovering Paulaner hefe-wiessbier at the big grocery store downstairs, which I grabbed for emergency use.  I left the mall in a pretty okay mood.

Okay, now fast forward! We're at the weekend after I went camping.  I woke up on Saturday morning at 2:30 in the morning.  That's right kids, this was the day we went fishing with our boss.  Our first move was to go to the convenience store, where our boss bought us beer.  Japanese has a specific word for this phenomenon--asazake, or "morning alcohol."  Then we hopped over to the city, picking up hooks and bait on the way, went out to the water, and, well, fished.  (P.s., my boss had brought the rods and other such gear.)  I don't have a whole lot of fishing experience under my belt, so I wasn't completely sure what was going to happen, or whether I would grievously harm myself in what would be a hilarious accident if it happened to someone else.  Here's how it went down.  We set up shop on a pier, not right on the sea because of the sea walls (where the hardcore nerds were fishing from) but jutting out into a calm body of water.  Like I said, I know jack about fishing, so this will be a laughable description, but instead of just one hook at the end of the line, we used a string of small hooks?  No clue what it's actually called.  Anyway.  The strategy was simple enough:  Bait, then plunk the rod down and wait for a tug.  The fish were, to my surprise, quite plentiful, and quite dumb too.  Every time I dropped my line, these little guys would be eagerly tugging at the line mere seconds later, as if begging me to deliver them from their boring existences as fish.  (Wow.  That got dark, yo.)  But we had quite a haul, maybe a few pounds or so of fish.  After napping all afternoon, we enjoyed our catch for dinner at our boss's house.  They turned out delicious; his mother (who lives next door) had fried them up, and we munched on them.  That was just a super pleasant evening; the boss is a secretly hilarious guy.  (Incidentally, one of the best feelings in the world is getting a joke in another language, like this morning when I asked him what to do if I see a bear [bear sightings being common in the fall] and he told me to just play dead.)  We learned that we're the first JETs they've ever invited to their home, which was a little surprising but very satisfying.

Man.  That's just the end of September.  I'll hit pause for now.  I'm probably missing a lot here too, especially since I've mostly been talking about the weekends without bringing up the Interesting Things that go on during the week.  I'll throw you one such bone:  Occasionally, my kids will ask me when I'm returning to America.  One such time was when I was eating lunch with my sixth-graders; I told the kid that I had just shown up, dude, and I wasn't planning on leaving just yet.  The kid next to me chimed in that I couldn't go back.

"Why not?"  I asked.

"You don't have a home there."

"What about my family's house?"

He thought hard about this.  "They died," he decided.  Pure gold.

When I was leaving school this past Friday, as I was leaving I told another student that I was going on a trip over the weekend.  His response?  "Oh, to America?"  Yep.  See you on Monday, kid.

 

One more:  We were doing timezones one day, and, pointing at Australia, I asked them what country I had indicated.  Now, I was already well-acquainted with my students' command of geography, so I wasn't surprised when they responded, "Germany!  America!  Africa!"  It was just their fearless, almost reckless bravado, the heroic enthusiasm with which they spitballed (and so magnificently failed) that caused me to seize up with laughter; I literally had to stop teaching, and wasn't sure if I would make it through the rest of the lesson.

 

 

These and other hilarious things are pretty much par for the course at the elementary school.  Honestly, my middle school days are more laid back because I teach fewer periods a day.  Teaching itself is still going pretty well.  I'm more or less on a regular schedule now, but I'm still working on getting completely used to it, particularly trying to balance being active and taking charge in the classroom versus keeping to a supporting role--my title, of course, is assistant language teacher, so you could say I'm trying to figure out when to be more "assistant" and when to be more "teacher", all the while trying to account for cultural differences.  But that'll come in time; I mean, it seems like forever ago now, but I've only been teaching for right under two months now.  Even so, it's not as weird as it used to be when people call me "sensei."

Quick review:  There were absolutely no dick jokes or bad words in this post.  At least one very specific reference.  Alas and alack, I failed by my own criteria.  Although I am digging this meta-writing.  Maybe in some future post I'll do a roundup of all such meta tidbits and see how well I'm doing on those, and so on until infinity, or until you snap, fly over, and shoot me in the kneecap.  Bring jerky when you do!

NEXT TIME:  A long weekend of shenanigans with Japanese pals old and new, and my stunning debut on the court at the biannual basketball tournament.  I should just quit my job, 'cause maybe then I would catch up on my blog.