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So, I bought some candles today. Here's what the warning label on the back had to say:
*Please use the goods with the good flow of the air and a suitable case.
*When the candle is burning or right after putting off a fire, don't touch it, otherwise, you may burn with it.
*Be careful with the sudden fall that is caused by the earthquake and the wind.
*Don't put the goods near the thing which burns easily, children and pets.
*When you put off the fire, don't water it.
*This is not a food, so don't put it in the mouth.
Not bad, I realize, especially in comparison with a lot of the Engrish that's out there, but I suppose I was just in a chuckling mood tonight.
Tonight, I'm not going to blog about my musings on the meaning of gratitude. I know that somewhere, on land mass much larger than the one upon which I currently reside, people are beginning to say hello to a day on which they will sit around a table, stuff themselves stupid with opulent amounts of food, and watch football or It's a Wonderful Life on TV. But, apart from a few Thanksgiving lessons that I've given at elementary schools over the past month, that has little to do with me right now.
Tonight, as I huddle in front of the cool glow of my MacBook screen and the hot air from my oil heater, I don't really have anything special to say about gratitude. But I do want to talk about creativity. And maybe gratitude ties into that a bit in the end. We'll see.
This evening I made stuff. For starters, I made some pumpkin pies (OK! You got me: you can take the girl out of America but you can't take the America out of the girl). They're sitting on my kitchen counter right now and the festive aroma they're sending my way is delightful. While the pies were cooking, I made some lanterns out of recycled glass jars and hung them in the kitchen. They look sort of pretty, dangling there.
There's something flooringly spectacular about the fact that human beings are creative beings. We've got something in us that no other creatures on Earth have got. God put it in there. Every creative act that we perform has the potential to be worship and all worship is creation. Pretty exciting.
I was reading a recent blog post by Ashely and it got me thinking further about how an important aspect of my job as an educator -- perhaps even the most important aspect, is my role in encouraging students to think for themselves and push themselves to be more than they realize they have the potential to be. This can be fairly tough at times because junior high school students -- particularly junior high school students in Japan -- don't like to stand out too much; and standing out is very often a direct byproduct of thinking for oneself.
The situation isn't helped much by the fact that language education in Japan, in general, emphasizes rote memorization and repeating lines from the text book over and over and over again until you finally reach the point where your brain implodes on itself from sheer boredom. It's no wonder that when I try to get my students to put together original sentences in English, using vocabulary they've already learned, they freak out. "What? You actually want my to think for myself? You mean I can't just copy a sentence out of my textbook? It's too hard!"
But we can't settle for mediocrity because the alternative is too hard. We need to push ourselves to achieve a potential beyond what we already know to be attainable and we need to encourage others to do the same.
So how can I respond to this responsibility? How do I encourage my students to live up to their potential when all most of them want to do is blend into the crowd and slide through classes by doing the minimum amount of work and praying that they teacher won't call on them and make them look stupid in front of their friends?
I've learned that the most important thing I can do is laugh with them. In class, I'm ridiculous. When I read passages out of the textbook for the students to repeat after me, I do so in absurd voices. I use excessive gestures, dance, sing, and basically leave class every day knowing that I've left a little bit of my dignity somewhere inside and that I'll never be able to get it back.
Does this work? I think so. Or at least sometimes it does. There are a few students who are so painfully shy, it's likely that nothing I do will ever make them feel comfortable speaking English in class. But there are others who realize, even if they mess up when forming sentences in English, they can't possibly make themselves look any more ridiculous than I've already made myself.
Perhaps my acting silly has nothing to do with English-learning, directly. But it does have to do with encouraging people and loving them and making them feel valuable and empowered to try their best. And, as I've come to learn, that's really what my job is, anyway. I'm grateful for such a job.
On the last stretch of my bike ride home this afternoon, I rounded the corner and saw an old woman standing on a sheet metal roof, using a long tool to pluck persimmons from an already leaf-bare tree.
Well, not really Furbies. But when I first glanced the image that went with the news headline on my Yahoo! mail page, I couldn't help but note the striking resemblance:
The little feller in the 2nd picture is a pygmy tarsier, a tiny primate long thought to be extinct, but recently spotted in the forests of Indonesia, eighty years since its last sighting by human eyes.
The reappearance of the pygmy tarsier gives me hope. For eighty years, he sat mum in his little island jungle. Nobody knew where he was and after a while, I bet nobody really cared. But suddenly, just when we had given up on the chance of ever seeing him again, he waltzed right back into our lives. No questions asked: the pygmy tarsier is definitely here and (let's hope) here to stay.
So why does this give me hope? Well, in case you haven't noticed, I've been a bit out of sight for a while. I'm far away on my own little island, and sometimes I worry that the folks back home will forget about me. When I eventually decide I want to move back to the States, what will my homecoming be like? Will my friends and family be able to seamlessly welcome me back into their lives? Sometimes I worry that they won't. Sometimes I worry that, by choosing to move to Japan and away from most of my loved ones, I've lost something that I'll never be able to get back.
But then there's the case of the pygmy tarsier. And if a primate the size of a mouse can do it, shouldn't I be able to as well? I want to think so. But the more realistic side of my urges me to focus not on what I've lost, but rather on the insights and experiences I've already gained by living in this crazy country that I now like to call home.
For fat, thick drops of rain trickling down my scalp. For things that can be reused and thus become more beautiful. For children who say hello to you not to impress their friends or feel brave, but just because they want to say hello. Praise for autumn. Praise for earth. Praise for praise.
I am grateful today for beautiful things, and how their existence has a way of making the not-so-beautiful things around them look something closer to beautiful. Sometimes the beautiful things are artwork, sometimes cups of tea, sometimes dear friends. Regardless, they make life precious. Praise for precious life.
I have been in Japan for two-and-a-half months. Sometimes living here is horribly difficult. But tonight, at least, it is beautiful. I light some candles and listen to the rain tap dancing on my sun roof. Life becomes simple. Thank God for simple life.
Yesterday was a long day. I spent half an hour on a bus to get to the train station to spend one-and-a-half hours on a train to get to Tokyo. Once there, I went to the Tokyo National Museum and walked around looking at Japanese art and artifacts for two-and-a-half hours. After that, I got lunch, visited Harajuku for some brief shopping, then hopped on the Yamanote Line back to Ueno, where I boarded another train for one-and-a-half hours, then finally took a bus back to Moka.
Naturally, I was looking forward to sleeping in on Sunday. No such luck. Because at eight o'clock in the morning, this happened.
There are some days when the existence of the "Japanese only" pub around the corner really gets to me. I'm reminded repeatedly that, to the majority of the people I encounter in daily life, I'll always be a foreigner first, a person second. Whereas, on some days it's amusing to witness people's astonished reactions when I confirm that, yes, I can eat Japanese food; on other days it's simply exhausting. And the language barrier doesn't do much to improve the situation: some people laud my ability to speak even a few words in Japanese; others seem to hate me for not being fluent. To tell the truth, I sometimes can't decide which bothers me more.
Yesterday, during my lunch break, I went for a little walk. The weather was absolutely perfect and, in the mild autumn air, my mind was clear. I seldom observe Moka from on foot, since I tend to ride my bicycle everywhere. On the occasions when I do decide to walk, however, I notice things about the city that I don't normally take into consideration. Yesterday, as I strolled down the street from Yamazaki Junior High to buy some juice from a vending machine, it struck me for the first time that, for the majority of the teachers and students that I work with, I'm the only foreigner they'll see all day. Perhaps, if they go to the grocery store, they might observe a Brazilian or even a Peruvian, but other than that, I'm it. They'll learn English regardless of whether I'm at school: Shimowada and Ishikawa both have more than enough knowledge and teaching ability to satisfy the foreign language-learning needs of junior high schoolers. So much more important than my role as a teacher is my role as a cultural ambassador. By interacting with them on a daily basis, maybe I can show my students that, even though we look different and don't speak the same language, we are equally valuable human beings, and that our feelings, emotions, and deepest desires (acceptance, attention, affirmation, love) are basically the same. Maybe some of them won't ever become consciously aware of this concept. But maybe -- just maybe -- if any of them grow up to own a restaurant or other small business, they won't write "Japanese Only" on the front.
Monday was Culture Day. No work. And so it came to be that, in order to fully savor the three-day weekend, Ryan, Doug, Yves, Josiah, Toshi, Kousuke, Sakaka, Jennifer, and I found ourselves camping out in cabins in the beautiful woods of Ashio. No, we didn't see any monkeys. But the autumn leaves were amazing.
I also had my very first onsen experience. That means I was naked. With strangers. I wish it weren't so late and I weren't so exhausted or I would fully do justice to the variety of emotions and comical encounters experienced this weekend. However, for now, it's off to bed I go.
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